The Electric Kingdom

by David Arnold

  Once, when Kit asked why all the bones they found were hollow, Lakie said, “Flu-flies mine them for marrow,” and Kit felt bad for the people who used to live in Town. These silly people with their pockets of cash-bucks and dead dreams and houses full of marrowless bones.

  Marrow was the fatty substance inside the bone, which Kit later confirmed with a number of literary sources in his very convenient library for kids.

  what lay beyond

  He hung his latest painting on the wall beside Spacedog & Computer #610 (covering up Spacedog & Computer #403), and then stood at the open window.

  Because the art classroom was on the second floor and the school was on Main Street, and because Main Street ran through the heart of Town, Kit could see everything from up here. It was warm but not too warm, the perfect weather for standing in an open window.

  A breeze blew in his face, and he held it like a wish, imagined where in the world this breeze had been born. The middle of the ocean, maybe.

  The ocean was one of the places he knew about but would never see. Like the moon.

  Or Texas.

  Or a jazz club.

  It was a long list.

  Across the street was his home, the Paradise Twin Cinema. Two stories tall, it was one of many old connected buildings on Main Street, all of them with history and things to say, though Kit loved the Paradise Twin most. It was stone and brick and had large iron letters across the top that read PARADISE TWIN, and below, a white-and-gold marquee that had once read WELCOME TO PARADISE, though a lot of the letters had fallen off.

  For security purposes (i.e., to keep Flu-flies out), they kept a large semicircle of cinnamon spread on the street in front of the entrance; after high sun curfew, once they were all safely inside, the doors were barricaded.

  Safe and sound. Tucked away. Home sweet home.

  One of the reasons Kit had chosen Taft Elementary was its convenient location. Twenty-two seconds from here to the Paradise Twin.

  Yeah.

  He was fast.

  There was Lakie now, walking home, rifle slung over one shoulder. She spent her mornings in the field behind Sheriff’s Office at a shooting range she’d set up years ago.

  Kit knew nothing of guns. Lakie, on the other hand, was about as efficient as you could be in most gun-related areas (e.g., shooting them, cleaning them, safety protocols, terminologies, and so forth). What Kit lacked in the weaponry department, he more than made up for in the observation department. Most days, as high sun curfew approached, he stood like this in his window, watching over his little world.

  A few doors down, Monty emerged from Pharmacy, where he spent his mornings on his crystal radio, or studying the Downfall of Society (DOS, as Monty called it). Where the shelves in Pharmacy had once stocked a variety of medicines, it was now home to hundreds of well-organized newspapers and magazine articles from the early days of the Flu-flies, as well as whatever books Monty could find in the adult library on the subjects of radio and communication.

  He was what you’d call “obsessed.”

  Here’s how that happened: a couple years ago, Monty found some kind of specialized earphone during a scavenge, and then spent months searching for the rest of the materials for his homemade radio. Apparently, a “crystal radio” required no batteries or electrical power of any kind, although its reach was limited.

  Still. Any distance seemed impossibly distant.

  “Hey!” Directly across the street, at eye level, his Dakota stood on the roof of the Paradise Twin. She was super-dirty, which meant today was for planting or harvesting. (Canning days were just “sweaty-dirty.”)

  It was no secret where Kit got his complexion: pale white skin, freckles dotting his nose and cheeks. His mother was the same. Theater tan, she called it. The palest of Paradises. But he had to admit, recently, she was looking more flushed than usual.

  She pointed at the sun, then held up five fingers. Five minutes.

  “Dakota Primavera tonight!” she yelled.

  He gave a thumbs-up. Dakota Primavera was her homemade potato pasta, plus crushed tomatoes and a seasonal rooftop vegetable.

  There had been a time, Kit knew, when some people’s convictions or diets or preferences had compelled them to forgo the consumption of meat. Here in Town, they were vegetarians because, as his Dakota said, “When the majority of the world has been wiped out, you don’t kill what’s left.”

  Kit didn’t mind. He had no memory of meat. Not to mention, his Dakota’s garden was an overturned cornucopia of variety, and she was basically a culinary genius.

  Until a few months ago her garden had been in an old park down the road. But a swarm had come, fast and strong, and she’d barely made it back to the Paradise Twin in time. His Dakota had taken an extra-long bath and they’d burned her clothes, and the very next day she’d started transferring the garden to the rooftop.

  Up there, she had the best possible vantage of the surrounding mountains. She kept a large handheld bell with her, and they ran weekly drills with no warning. She would ring the bell, and each of them—Kit from his classroom, Monty from Pharmacy, Lakie from behind Sherriff’s Office—would drop what they were doing and run to the Paradise Twin.

  Standing in his window now, he let go of the breeze, imagined it floating down Main Street, up into the endless mountains that surrounded Town. He thought of a book from the nonfiction shelves about the solar system, and how someone had written in the margins of a page, THE FINAL FRONTIER. From this book, Kit learned that there had once been some very smart people who knew an awful lot about space. Some had gone to space, flown rockets into space, explored regions and documented their findings. However, the book said, outer space is an infinite ocean in which humans have only yet dipped the corner of a toenail.

  Kit thought back to that day of their very first drill. After his Dakota had rung the bell from the rooftop and they’d all run to the Paradise Twin, she’d looked them in the eye and said, “We will not be caught off guard.”

  “Again, you mean,” Kit had said quietly.

  As far as he knew, they had been caught off guard exactly twice: his Dakota’s recent close call, and years before, when Kit was very young, the swarm that killed Monty and Lakie’s biological parents.

  He hadn’t meant anything by it. But the looks they’d given him that day taught him something. There was a code. A right way, and a wrong way, to speak of the Flies. Surviving, running, fighting, preparing, defending—these were part of the code. Reminding everyone of a time when the Flies had taken something from them—this was not.

  How to be human, it seemed, was an infinite ocean in which Kit had only yet dipped the corner of a toenail.

  PART TWO

  IN

  THE

  HOUSES

  OF

  LIGHT

  THE DELIVERER

  I find the house in my 7th Life, according to the Red Books.

  The only thing more exquisite than its architecture—all sharp angles and natural wood and enormous triple-pane windows—is its ingenuity. To say it was built on top of a mountain is only half correct, as the entire back half of the house is actually set into the mountain, immersed in mineral, rock, soil. Where architectural designs had once attempted to bend the will of nature, my house bends to nature’s will.

  And with such grace.

  Survival really is the cleanest aesthetic.

  The mountain itself is a scripted V flipped upside down: on one side, a steady, incremental climb; on the other, a steep drop, uncounted hundreds of feet to the bottom. During my 7th Life, according to the Red Books, I saw this upside-down V from miles away, and came up here to jump.

  Imagine my surprise.

  Not only in finding the house (and its many miraculous amenities), but at the decomposed body dangling from the upstairs walkway, greeting me upon my arrival. No identification, no note
, hardly any sign he’d actually lived in this place so meticulously designed to withstand Flies and the darkened world.

  The Architect, I call him, though I can’t be sure he was the one who designed the place.

  Whoever had designed it had done a spectacular job.

  My house has no hallways, and few walls. On the ground level, the suggestion of a kitchen nook with an island counter. Beyond that, an open area with a couch facing an enormous wall made of glass. Such majesty in a snowstorm! Thunderstorm! Any storm! Those are my favorite nights, sipping wine, reading a book, listening to records by this glass wall, while outside a storm rages.

  Upstairs, a loft space with a bed to end all beds. Four-poster. Mattress you could swim in like a pool. Most mornings, I wake in the cupped palm of this mountain to find the clouds outside my bedroom window. I usually lie in bed for a while, if the Red Books allow, and stare at the photograph on my nightstand until my heart hurts.

  Onward now, through the house.

  Out back, beyond the chickens in their fortress-coop, through the vegetable garden (a harvest calendar in the kitchen, which veggies for which season), beyond the ten-thousand-gallon rainwater harvesting tank, twenty more steps: here is the edge of the cliff, the tip-top of the upside-down V.

  Here is the true source of ingenuity, survival, life . . .

  The entire face of the cliff is covered in solar panels.

  Countless hours I’ve spent here, sitting on the edge of the world, contemplating the manpower, machinery, or magic involved in attaching so many panels in so many unreachable places. It seems impossible, yet there they are, tilted just so, unfettered access to the sun.

  Who were you, O Architect, O man of mystery? Military? Government? The ultimate wealthy survivalist? You, who’d gone to such great lengths to preserve your life, considered every possible angle but your own mind—who were you?

  Chilled eggs in the refrigerator. A stovetop to cook and heat water. An AeroPress and beans for coffee. Vinyl spinning in the living room, lounging by the glass wall.

  I am not complaining.

  I push buttons, flip switches, my own little kingdom in the clouds. And when that godlike power swells inside me, I remind myself that light begets light, that my power to create it is only the subset of a greater power, perhaps the greatest: the sun, that beautiful burning orb.

  Here, in the earth’s song of ruin, my House by the Solar Cliffs is a reprise of survival. In it, I have learned to be grateful for repetition. And while summers are hot and winters are long, and while aloneness is itself a presence in the room, loneliness is nothing but pure absence, a reaching down and hollowing out. I have learned to love myself, my own company. I have learned that you can hate a house only so long as you avoid a fundamental truth: that you are the one who calls it home.

  Even now, in my 160th Life, I am learning new things.

  I write all these things down in the Red Books, so that I might never forget.

  NICO

  Holes

  Three days before Nico found the skin and bones of a deer hanging in a tree, she sat in the Farmhouse library, staring at the dwindling flames in the fireplace, feeling herself dwindle right along with them.

  “You okay?”

  She looked up at her father, the usual hollowness of his pale white cheeks filled with dirt and dried sweat. Her face was probably just as filthy. “What?”

  “I asked if you were okay,” he said.

  There was no telling how long they’d been sitting like this. She would have wished for sleep or unconsciousness if she’d had the energy to wish for things, and now she couldn’t remember if she’d answered the question—but no, she was not okay.

  “How long have we been sitting here?” she asked, looking back to the fireplace.

  “I don’t know. A while.”

  From the ratty couch, Nico reached out a hand to rest on Harry’s head, but felt nothing. She was an empty vessel now, this was her life. A room for hire, an unfillable ditch.

  “Should we have buried her outside?” asked her father.

  Nico looked at the ceiling, imagined the cluttered attic above, the little door that led out to the deck and the Bell tower: It was Nico’s favorite spot in the Farmhouse. She’d spent countless hours up there, staring out across the miles of New Hampshire forest in all directions, pretending their Farmhouse in the middle of the woods was a lighthouse in the middle of the ocean.

  Her mother had often referred to the house as if it were an old woman. She’d step on a squeaky floorboard and say, “Her arthritis is flaring up,” or when it was drafty in the winter, “Her blood’s running thin.” Old woman or not, the house was bent on protecting its inhabitants from the outside world: every window was boarded up; the back door had been bricked off; the bathroom was gutted, hollowed into an elevated outhouse. Nico had been allowed once-a-day monitored outdoors time in the confined clearing between the front porch and the tree line. Occasionally she helped plant or harvest the family’s corn crops behind the house, climb the apple tree for the out-of-reach fruits, or set traps along the perimeter, but other than these instances, and her time on the attic deck, she did not go outside.

  “No,” said Nico. “She would have wanted to be in the house.”

  Suddenly, a piercing alarm rang through the house; her father stood, limped across the room to where a small flashing-red box was affixed to the wall. He flipped a switch on the box and the house went quiet. “Holes are the opposite of electricity,” he said.

  “What?”

  He was quiet a moment, just staring at the box. Powered by a single rooftop solar panel, the Electronic sounded an alarm twice a day: shortly after the sun came up, and sometime after it went back down. Long ago, the alarm signaled that the time had come for someone to trek up to the attic deck and ring the Bell. As a young child, Nico had never questioned the Bell’s purpose, just as she’d never questioned the purpose of the fireplace, the cellar shelves, the water pump in the mudroom. And then one day it occurred to her that the fireplace kept them warm, the cellar shelves kept them fed, the water pump kept them hydrated. What did the Bell do, exactly? But whenever she asked her father, he would mutter maddeningly vague answers about it having something to do with his work, but that it no longer mattered, and so she was left to her imaginings: maybe the Bell was a method of communication among other Farmhouses in the area; maybe it was some sort of survivalist call-and-response; or, her favorite, maybe every building on Earth had a Bell, maybe there had once been a great choir of Bells the world over, maybe people everywhere used to clang and sing in resounding harmony.

  Whatever its purpose, no one had rung the thing in ages. Nico suspected the reason her father hadn’t disconnected the Electronic was because it reminded him of the old world, a time when there were so many Electronics, each had their own name.

  “Opposite isn’t the right word,” he said, still staring at the device on the wall. “But the absence of electrons . . . or rather, the electrons go one way, holes go the other. I forget.”

  It was happening all over again.

  First her mom. Now him.

  “I should fix dinner,” he said, turning from the Electronic, his eyes landing on the bright red bag by the front door.

  If he thought she hadn’t noticed the covert packing, the muttering under his breath about some cryptic trek south, he was wrong. Not that it mattered now. There was no way he was leaving her here alone. Not to mention the sudden onset limp in his left leg, and a usually drum-tight mind that was now leaking in several places. What little Nico knew of the woods had been taught to her by a man who currently had no business being in them.

  Whatever his trip was, it was off. She would put her foot down if she had to.

  “I should fix dinner,” he said again, like some glitchy robot.

  “Okay, Dad.”

  Light from the fire flickered off t
he bookshelves lining the walls, as if the flames were the sun and the spines were tiny insignificant planets. Nico closed her eyes and tried to remember the feel of her mother’s hugs, the crinkled flipping of that old Bible’s wafer-thin pages, those eyes the color of kindness, but already these feelings were fading, each memory of her mother a grain of sand in an hourglass nearly expired.

  “I should fix dinner.”

  Nico opened her eyes, found her father standing there staring at the Electronic on the wall, and she wondered how long before his sands slipped away too.

  “Okay, Dad.”

  Homes

  Dinner by candlelight. Just the one candle, as always.

  Mouth full of rabbit and corn, her father said, “Hey.”

  “What.”

  A little smile. “Happy birthday.”

  An image: one year ago, the three of them smiling around this same table. Her mother had concocted a sort of cookie out of water, smashed apples, and the Metallyte brown sugar cereal. The result was pasty, but sweet, and Nico had blown out a candle, knowing she was supposed to make a wish, but not knowing what to wish for.

  “October twenty-eighth,” he said. “Still your day, honey.”

  She stared at her plate, trying to fathom a world in which she could think of nothing to wish for.

  “Plus, now you’re eighteen. Legal adult in the eyes of New Hampshire.”

  “Guess I can buy beer now.”

  “Nah, that’s twenty-one,” he said.

  “I can wait three years.”

  “Oh, I’ve got it all planned. Got my sights set on a nice six-pack of single-malt vodka-beer down at the booze shop.” He took a sip of water, smiled over his cup, and it would have felt good, this old banter of theirs, but the ease and speed with which he transformed from the loving, wisecracking father she knew to the empty-eyed robot from the library moments ago was all too familiar. “Thought I might pick up a bottle of butterwine while I’m at it,” he joked.