Ashes of Foreverland

by Bertauski, Tony

  Alessandra.

  Her head was back, arms out. The sky was falling and the city collapsing, but the chaos didn’t touch her. The closer they got, the stronger the scent of lilac.

  She’s the air we breathe, the ground we walk. And she’s destroying it.

  Now there is light to see.

  But Alessandra wasn’t alone. There were others huddled beneath the remnants of awnings and crooked doorways. And they were nude, not a pair of socks or a shirt among them. Ash settled on their shoulders and hung from their frayed hair.

  Old, wrinkled, and saggy, they clung to each other. Some appeared to be shouting, but most were wide-eyed and frightened. He recognized one of them. His hair was the color of black that only came from a bottle.

  Mr. Smith. Danny stopped running. The Investors.

  These were the perpetrators, the thieves, the old men and women that refused to die. They were the ones that threw them into the Nowhere.

  The Nowhere that now hovered over them with a menacing boil.

  Somehow, Alessandra brought them here.

  “Cyn!”

  Someone intercepted her—an old woman, the only one clothed, grabbed her before Cyn reached Alessandra. She wrapped both arms around her and dragged her down, jewelry sparkling on her wrists.

  Cyn struggled to get away.

  Danny twisted the discs to keep the holes lined up as he ran. The vibrations quickly numbed his fingers. Alessandra wasn’t standing in a beam of light.

  She is the light.

  Her light beamed through the discs’ tiny holes like infinitesimal wires. With each turn they began to line up. With each turn, the wire of light became less intense. The circular shadow cast across his stomach became more opaque.

  And then vanished.

  The discs were aligned—blue, yellow and green. All three solid objects left no trace in the presence of light.

  They didn’t need to find a bridge, didn’t need to build a bridge. The last package was addressed to all three of them. Danny misinterpreted the message—it wasn’t you are the bridge.

  We are the bridge.

  38. Tyler

  Foreverland

  Monster.

  They sought to create a new Foreverland, one for every living soul. Instead, they created a monster.

  A black hole.

  Alessandra could’ve ended their lives like meaningless ants. Instead, she bridged into Patricia’s Foreverland and yanked them into her world, put them on the curb to watch the annihilation of Foreverland.

  They thought they were safe. No one could bridge Foreverlands like that. No one is like Alessandra.

  One moment, Tyler was standing next to the pool, dancing with his wife, and the next he was without clothes, shivering on the sidewalk, gravel digging into the soles of his feet, old age aching in his hunched spine.

  What have we done?

  It was hard to breathe, the air hot and gritty, thick with floral essence that coated his lungs. It was snowing, the remnants of a distant volcano drifting down from a gray sky.

  The noise was worse. He didn’t hear the pillar slam into the street, didn’t hear the cracking asphalt. It was lost in the pervasive buzz, the sound of static that drowned everything, that scratched his ears, his eyes. The buzz drove a ticklish fever beneath his wrinkled, spotted skin.

  Tyler put his arm around Patricia and attempted to cover her nudity. Alessandra could strip him of his dignity, but not his wife.

  Not like this.

  She hid her face. Her hair had thinned and grayed, her flesh hung from her shoulders. She aged the moment she was pulled from her world, no longer graceful. No longer angelic. She was a dried husk of a human being.

  And the noise grew louder.

  It was a jackhammer inside his teeth, picking at his organs and chiseling apart his joints. It shook loose his bladder. Urine ran down his legs.

  There were others.

  One by one, they fell out of the sky and landed with bone-breaking force—men and women just as nude, just as old. They emerged from a cloud of gray fluff, uninjured, and covered their ears.

  Their shock was all too apparent.

  They struggled to breathe the thick air, attempted to speak. Eventually, they backed away from the beam of light. Alessandra glowed like an angel.

  Destroyed like a demon.

  Patricia covered her mouth. Tyler felt her breath on his shoulder, her words against his ear. He couldn’t understand her, but knew what she was saying. She recognized them, too.

  The Investors.

  These were the men and women that funded Foreverland. They were the ones that went out to the island, the ones that lived in the wilderness. They had moved into younger bodies, yet they were here.

  They were old again.

  Did she pull them out of their stolen bodies, just reach into the physical world and snatch them up like she’d done to us?

  The biomites, of course.

  The Investors had likely been seeded with biomites that allowed them to network with other biomites. Just like Tyler. Alessandra was reaching across all networks and grabbing their true identities.

  Tyler could feel Patricia’s tears against his arm. He moved to shield her from the others as they continued to fall. A puddle formed around his feet. Patricia’s bladder let loose.

  Don’t do this to Patricia. She’s given so much.

  Alessandra could take Tyler, do what she wanted: embarrass him, ridicule him, march him naked in front of the entire world. He deserved it. But not Patricia. She was too loving.

  Too good.

  Tyler stepped off the curb and shook his fist to get Alessandra’s attention. An invisible force pushed him back. His words were crushed in the heightened grind of static. He fell back, struggling to breathe. All he could do was mutter a prayer that never made it past his fluttering lips.

  God, help us.

  But their goddess wasn’t listening.

  All he could do was hold his wife. If it was the last thing he could do, he would hold her, protect her from the falling sky until the vibrations reached his bones.

  The beam of light intensified.

  Tyler shielded his eyes. Alessandra was a bleached, blurry figure. Barb was out there. Somehow that guilty bitch escaped the goddess’s wrath. She stopped Cynthia from reaching Alessandra.

  Reed sent her. She showed Alessandra the extent of her omnipotence. She should be on the curb.

  The buildings no longer crumbled, but the blizzard of ash continued. The dark sky closed on them.

  The hair on his arms stood up.

  The grind of static popped his ears like hot needles. The old men and women covered their ears, mouths agape in agony. In silence, they screamed.

  The static was inside him now. He felt it grind the inside of his body. His eyes filled with tears.

  He looked up.

  Please no formed on his lips.

  In his liquefying bones, he heard the true nature of the tortuous sound. It wasn’t static after all.

  Voices.

  Hundreds of scared and lonely voices, scattered like dust. They were coming for them.

  We threw them out there.

  Those were the voices he heard when he woke from the stroke, when Gramm saved his life.

  Where are you, Gramm?

  Alessandra wasn’t just ending her world. She was making them pay for it. And the sins that built it.

  The shadow collapsed around them.

  The buildings disappeared.

  The road.

  Ashes filled the world.

  Only a shaft of light remained, Alessandra a blurred vision.

  Tyler whispered a plea that would never become more than a thought.

  I love you, he whispered and wrapped his arms around his wife as the voices exploded like a sandstorm inside him.

  His body went fuzzy.

  The air corroded his lungs and softened his flesh.

  He pulled Patricia closer and felt his arms merge into her as if she were
dissolving.

  Their molecules were letting go, spreading out.

  Her heart beat into his chest. Her screams, silent.

  With the last movement of his mind, the last thought that would ever be experienced by the human being known as Tyler Ballard was formed. It was a realization.

  He saw the real monsters.

  They burst into subatomic particles, the fabric of their minds stretched across the universe. The agony was unforgiveable.

  This is the Nowhere.

  39. Alessandra

  Foreverland

  Alex pulled down the Nowhere.

  Barb had calmed her, got her to breathe, to feel just how big this world had become.

  How big she had become.

  This was all a product of her mind—these buildings and streets, the sky and clouds and insects crawling along the sidewalks. The realization was overwhelming, but Barb was there to guide her through it, to help her see the truth, that this reality—what Alex had become—was not solely the product of her mind.

  They used children to build it.

  And Barb was one of the guilty ones.

  “I know.” Barb closed her eyes and nodded. She was aware of what she’d done. That’s why she was there. To balance the scales.

  “I was an Investor,” she said. “There are more like me.”

  The Investors lived in these younger, stolen bodies. In today’s era of biotechnology, they all had biomites.

  “And biomites interconnect minds.”

  Alex could network through biomites. And that’s what she did. She created connections, starting with the Ballards. She found them in Patricia’s Foreverland, a tiny universe in the ethers of existence. Having already established a connection, they were easy. The others took some time, but like an electromagnetic claw, she found them in the physical world and pulled them from their thieved bodies.

  She brought them into Foreverland.

  The Investors witnessed their true forms and were forced to see each other for what they were: naked, ugly and alone.

  Alex closed her eyes and lifted her face to the sun.

  It was not the sun that beamed down. She was the sun, the source of light, the center of this reality. She was a star that willingly collapsed like a black hole.

  The warmth cleansed her of anguish, shed the sorrow and the pain. Her sadness transformed into acceptance.

  And the rain rose off the ground and the ash fell.

  The buzz of the Nowhere raged like a lumber mill, the voices becoming clearer. The children...the children were fed to the Nowhere to build this. To support me.

  “Shhhhhh,” Barb said, soothing the voices in the Nowhere. “Soon. Your suffering ends soon.”

  Alex drew the life force into a beam of light.

  She let go of the guilt, the shame and sorrow. She let go of her past.

  She looked out at the Investors, naked and alone in the shattered world. They were dim forms, vague figures lost in the blizzard of the approaching Nowhere. Their cries were endless and silent. Their anguish as deep as the Nowhere.

  The Nowhere pulled them, cell by cell, into its entropic void. They fed the insatiable hunger with their being. Even Barb.

  And the voices stopped, the ashes gracefully drifting to the ground until all was quiet, all was still.

  The children hushed.

  She didn’t know where the children went, how they escaped or how the Investors took their place.

  The scales were balanced.

  40. Danny Boy

  Foreverland

  The Nowhere hummed at Danny’s heels, ate through his ears and burned in his chest. The asphalt, once unforgiving, now softened beneath his steps like melting clay. Amidst the charred wreckage, the smell of lilac could not be stronger, as if the buildings were built of it.

  He clutched the discs.

  Alessandra was pure light, only a faint outline still visible. Barb had thrown Cyn to the ground. Hardly visible through the thickening ash, they rolled in puffs of dusty gray until they were coated. Barb saw him coming and yanked her to her feet. Cyn’s hair stood out like fire. An aura encircled her as he neared.

  The city had been swallowed.

  The light burned Danny’s eyes. He shielded his face, the discs glowing. Barb let go just as he grabbed Cyn’s hand. The road turned to quicksand, eating their steps as they charged the beam of light.

  Their fingers snapped together.

  The Nowhere closed around them; the voices ate the ground, the air, the inside of their bones.

  He didn’t feel his last step as they reached for the light, lunged with all their weight and collided with Alessandra—

  No sight, no sound.

  Not even the ring of silence.

  Nothingness.

  SPRING (AGAIN)

  Death is a doorway.

  To exit.

  To enter.

  The office was silent.

  Distant vibrations and damp, cool air were reminders of the subterranean laboratory. Production never stopped. There was always a need, always a want. As long as people could pay the price, they would.

  They did.

  Jonathan sat back in the chair. He focused on his breathing, harnessed his attention, brought his awareness to the right here and now.

  The door opened.

  Julie and others walked into the spacious office. Outside those doors, the warehouse was silent. Jonathan bolted upright. No one took a seat. He looked from face to face, searching for an answer. He’d given everything for this moment.

  “We’re ready,” Julie said. “They’re dressed.”

  Jonathan could hardly feel his legs.

  The team of technicians was all present, all twenty-seven of them from different parts of the world, all sworn to secrecy, to operate in anonymity. They were compensated handsomely.

  They walked into the warehouse.

  A few words were said by the team leaders, this being the largest and most ambitious project of its kind. One of them held an object about the size of a cell phone. Julie handed it to Jonathan. His hand was shaking. She wrapped her fingers around his hand.

  “You do the honors, Jonathan.”

  A single icon shone beneath the glass. He put his thumb on it and looked around. On eyes on him. Two hundred and four latches simultaneously thrummed. The doors released.

  Movement stirred.

  Jonathan didn’t feel Julie take the control from him. He didn’t see the team spread out and watch the doors, one by one, slowly open. No one moved, everyone waited, collectively holding their breath.

  The warehouse grew quiet again.

  Water dripped.

  And then the first door swung open. A pair of large eyes peeked out. A child, a girl about the age of twelve, blonde hair damp and matted, stepped out.

  41. Danny Boy

  Foreverland

  There was sky.

  Danny didn’t recognize it as sky. He was on his back, looking into the endless blue canvas. It could’ve been the glassy ocean at daybreak, but his mouth was dry and the air warm.

  Pain flashed across his forehead.

  He closed his eyes until the tension relaxed. His skin was warm and damp with sweat, tight where the sun had turned it pink. The grass crunched as he lifted his arm.

  His elbow struck something hard.

  It lay in the tall weeds, a half-buried circle with raised numbers. He pulled the grass aside and scraped the algae and matted leaves away.

  A sundial.

  The pain returned when he sat up, almost dragging him back into unconsciousness. He rode out the splashing white flashes inside his skull. Birds scuttled in the trees behind him. The briny scent of the ocean was strong.

  Something is missing.

  A three-storied dormitory was across the field, the windows punched out, vines clawing the walls. Beyond that, just above the trees, the cylindrical outline of another building was set against the cloudless tropical sky. The windows, once reflective, were now dull and chalky. It
listed slightly to the left.

  He knew where he was. How did I get here?

  Something rustled in the grass.

  Danny jumped up, regrettably, and fought the spots stabbing his vision, the pain lighting up his head as he scanned the trees and sky for predators. The tall grass was still matted where he was lying, the edge of the sundial—weathered and cracked—still exposed.

  A path led away from it.

  The sun reflected off the trampled grass. Danny bent down to pick up a disc—just one disc, the side smooth and reflective and perforated with a galaxy of tiny holes. And then the memories surfaced.

  The three discs, the ash-covered world, the final beam of light. And then this.

  The island.

  A shiver trickled down his back, clinked in his stomach like cold cubes. It was just like he remembered when he woke up that first day with the old man telling him he was somewhere special, that they were going to help him. It smelled green and new. White birds soared with promise.

  But the buildings were abandoned, the field overgrown. There were no old men, no boys being marched to the haystack. And something else was missing.

  The lilac is gone.

  The ever-present scent of lilac that had followed him for the past year had been replaced by the ocean.

  He turned the disc over. The pattern of holes was the same as the others, but he didn’t expect to find them. They wouldn’t be hiding in the grass. This disc was different. The edge was red.

  A moan behind him.

  Danny spun and saw a depression ten feet away, the curve of a bended knee. Cyn lay on her back, her head cradled in a nest of bundled grass, her skin slightly pink. He fell on his knees and took her hand. Her repose was undisturbed, her hair fanned over the ground.

  Her eyelids fluttered. Eyes unfocused, she gazed into the cloudless blue for several moments.

  “Hey.” Danny squeezed.

  Her breath came in long, cool strokes. She started to sit up and scrunched her eyes. Folds wrinkled across her forehead. Danny could still feel a dull ache between his eyes, but the pain had faded. Hers was fresh out of the box.