The Electric Kingdom

by David Arnold

  (“Can you skip to the good part?” said Nico.)

  (“It’s all the good part. My stories only have good parts.”)

  (“Dad.”)

  One night, quite suddenly, the stars went out. Poof. The sky, the seas, all of it, covered in complete darkness. Lightbringer scurried up the lighthouse to switch on the lamp. Skykeeper ran around in circles, screaming, “All is lost, all is lost!” Bellringer took Voyager by the hand, led her down to the shores of the island where her small rowboat was kept.

  “Take thy boat,” said Bellringer. “Row thyself to the Kingdom, thus to Kairos Castle take heed, perchance, milady, and there inquireth as to what the heck is happening!”

  (Nico laughed; her father smiled. It always happened this way.)

  So Voyager looked out across the darkened seas. “I can’t see a thing. I’ll get lost.”

  Bellringer pointed to the shallow part of the ocean where the blowfish awaited. “Yyyysssssssuuuuuuuburt,” said the blowfish, which meant, “I will lead you through the darkness!”

  Voyager said, “But even if I get to the Kingdom, how will I know where to go?”

  Bellringer explained that the castle was surrounded by a cluster of brick mills. “Findeth the mills, milady, and you’ve found Kairos. Now, Voyager, sail thou forth to seek and find!”

  (“Wait. That’s Whitman,” said Nico.)

  (“Shh.”)

  So, Voyager sailed the seas for days, followed her trusty blowfish, wondering aloud what was happening in her world. “Hrrrrrrphhhhhhizzz,” said the blowfish, which either meant, “A great darkness has descended upon our land,” or “I could really go for some cake right now.” Blowfish is an ancient language, there are varying theories among scholars vis-à-vis this particular interpretation—

  (“Dad.”)

  Days passed at sea, until one afternoon, with no land in sight, an orca swam by. “Where are you headed?” asked the orca.

  “None of your business.” In Voyager’s experience, orcas were scheming and untrustworthy creatures.

  “Wherever you are going,” said the orca, circling her boat, “it will take you a long time with nothing but oars. Why not tie your line to my dorsal fin, let me pull you to your destination?”

  Voyager considered this. “How do I know you won’t bite my hand off?”

  The orca dipped below the surface. When he came back up, he said, “Yes. It would be a gamble.”

  Voyager looked around: nothing but dark water in every direction. “Very well. We’re headed to the Kingdom of Manchester, as fast as you can, please.” The orca swam up alongside the boat, and Voyager tied the line to his dorsal fin. “Thank you,” she said.

  “For what?”

  “For not eating my hand, I suppose.”

  “The day is young,” said the orca. “And I am hungry.”

  Things went much faster tied to the dorsal fin of an orca, and by evening the following day, Voyager found herself standing on the shores of Manchester—this Kingdom she’d so longed to see—now totally obliviated. She walked its empty markets, passed the shadow of what had once been a circus. Inside the walls of Kairos Castle, it was only worse. She found no King, no Queen, just more of the same dark emptiness.

  There was, however, a sound. She followed this sound to a great hall, and there she found an enormous fountain. “The Waters of Kairos,” she said.

  “Indeed,” said a nearby voice.

  Voyager spun to find a nameless, faceless witch standing in the corner. “Oh.”

  “Indeed,” said the witch again, stepping a little from the shadows.

  Voyager was scared but determined. “What has happened to our world?” she asked.

  The witch took another step closer. “A darkness has chased away the sky. It has erased the Kingdom of Manchester, and all great Kingdoms of the world.”

  “Oh,” said Voyager.

  “Indeed,” said the witch.

  At that moment, the waters in the fountain began to bubble and spin, and Voyager knew that Bellringer had done his duty, that the toll had activated the Waters of Kairos.

  The nameless, faceless witch pointed into the heart of the fountain whose waters now spun furiously. “In you go, my dear.”

  “What? I’m not going in there.”

  The witch said, “The door is open. You must enter.”

  Voyager was tempted, but only for a moment. Thinking of Bellringer back home, and Lightbringer and Skykeeper, she said, “I will not abandon my friends.”

  The witch took another step from the shadows. “You asked what was happening to our world. Now ask the question you came to ask.”

  Voyager stood at her tallest and asked the question that suddenly burned in her heart. “How can I fight this darkness?”

  The witch pointed to the spinning Waters of Kairos. “In you go, my dear.”

  THE DELIVERER

  Into the shower, the revelation of water on skin.

  I like to imagine the cycle of water, gathering in the sky, bursting and falling into my ten-thousand-gallon cistern. I picture it running through the downstairs filter, the heater, before flowing through pipes in the walls, and for the briefest of moments it is on my face, before returning to the pipes, the earth, the air.

  Sometimes, instead of clouds outside my bedroom window, I see eternal life.

  I see myself.

  Shower complete, I stand over the sink, rub fog from the mirror, run the blade under water. I cannot remember when I first decided to shave my head. Long enough ago to have forgotten what hair feels like.

  More than just the absence of hair, my reflection has become incrementally less familiar to me. “Where did you come from?” I ask myself in the mirror.

  It’s called aging, the mirror says back. First you are young, then you are not.

  I get a good froth going. Slowly, blade against skin, from the back of my neck, plotting a course from pore to pore, I keep the shave close, right down to the scalp. Strangely, there is enormous comfort in the process, and while I will never fully acclimate to the way the world looks through the visor of my helmet—that deep green tint, unnatural, sapping, and sickly—I cannot deny a curious pleasure in the sensation of its soft rubber foam against my skull.

  As I shave, I consider what the Red Books have in store for today. Entries from the last few weeks have been nothing but gastric lavage instruction manuals, my bedside table stacked with every book the Hooksett Library had on the subject. I’ve been up to my elbows in intubation equipment, endotracheal tubes, jelly lubricants, and activated charcoal. So far as I can remember, this is the first time the Books have dedicated so many pages to one thing.

  And now the day is here.

  I towel off and get dressed. Back downstairs, over a second cup of coffee, I put on a record and stand in front of the map that brought me here years ago. Trace a finger from the bottom corner, follow the line of red ink through woods and mountains, roads and towns, finally landing in the top corner, and the words written here that had once been so daunting, so mysterious . . .

  This house will save your life, it reads.

  The map is in a frame.

  It won’t be for much longer.

  I drain what’s left in the mug, pour a third coffee, and by the time I return to the couch, rain is pounding the window. I watch this collision of clouds and earth—the cycle of life unending— and with this frame of mind, I open the third Red Book.

  DATE: October 2, 2043

  ACTION ITEMS:

  —Pack all gastric lavage tools, suction and intubation equipment, large-bore OG tubes, endotracheal tube–stabilizing devices, jelly lubricants, saline, and activated charcoal.

  —Follow purple route west to Pin Oak Forest.

  Northernmost peak. Cluster of campers.

  INCIDENTAL NOTES

  Life 13 here
: Get there by sunset or they die.

  Life 43: Southwest of Hooksett, we hear a person yelling for help. Circumnavigate. He is not in need.

  Life 76: Gear up. Mountainous terrain.

  I return the mug to the kitchen and head upstairs for my biosuit.

  “Here we go.”

  KIT

  uninspired signage

  KNOW YOUR ENEMY

  (quick tips on Fly Flu and spotting its carrier)

  THE MULTITASKING KILLER: As with prior strands of influenza, Fly Flu is believed to pass from person to person, though little scientific evidence of this has been verified. (Wash hands thoroughly and regularly!) Unlike prior strands, the primary carrier also acts as killer.

  BUSINESS TIME: The Flu-fly prefers to travel in a “business” (the technical term for a group of flies).

  TEMPER, TEMPER: Leading theories suggest the Fly is not a product of nature, but a botched experiment. If true, this might explain why the Fly acts as a fearless aggressor, more closely resembling an angry bee than the common housefly.

  BLINK OF AN EYE: The Flu-fly moves fast. (See: angry bee!)

  FEED AND BREED: It is widely believed that Flu-flies stick together for two reasons: to breed with rapid frequency and to feed on their own dead. This stunningly effective evolutionary twist allows a business of Flu-flies to survive in isolated spaces for years at a time!

  The sign was clearly homemade. Just a plain white sheet of paper with black type.

  No artistic sensibility at all.

  Kit found it on the floor behind the library help desk and then hung it in his corner, in the window over his orange beanbag. As he waited for his painting to dry, he reread the sign, and wondered about the brain in the head of the person who’d cooked it up.

  Maybe the person was still alive! Maybe this was their life’s work, climbing mountains, roaming the countryside, sailing the high seas in search of small children in need of basic education via sad homemade signs.

  No, probably not.

  Probably, the head of the person who’d cooked it up had no brains left.

  Hollowed-out skull and whatnot.

  Later, back in his art classroom, he pulled Spacedog & Computer #632 from the easel. It had been weeks since the breakthrough painting (#611), in which he’d mixed in glitter to create the shimmery key. Since then, each day’s painting seemed duller than the day before.

  He hung today’s effort on the wall and spent what was left of his free time gazing out the window. Even from a foot away he could feel the cold radiating off the glass. Soon there would be snow and he would be forced to live months on end in a coat and that knit cap his Dakota had made for him.

  He hated that knit cap. It made his brain itch.

  Right on time, there was Lakie, returning from the woods behind Sheriff’s Office. He looked toward Pharmacy now, waiting, wondering if today was the day Monty’s crystal radio would reappear. It had been weeks (the same day Kit first mixed glitter with paint) since Monty’s announcement of a possible safe zone.

  Thunder sounded in the distance; behind the theater, the mountains loomed large. Kit looked at them now and wondered why he cared so much about the radio. He was safe here in Town. Anyway, his Dakota had made it clear she didn’t want to leave, and he’d always wanted what she wanted.

  And yet . . .

  Staring at the mountains, Kit felt the full weight of his unleashed psyche, and he knew he wanted to do more than look at those mountains, he wanted to be in them.

  He wanted to see the ocean.

  And Texas.

  He wanted to see What Lay Beyond.

  But he couldn’t tell his Dakota this. Which meant if Monty didn’t convince her to leave, they would stay here forever.

  This stunningly effective evolutionary twist allows the burgeoning young artist, a Knower of Things, to survive in isolated spaces for years at a time!

  “I should make a sign,” he said, and was about to turn from the window when he saw it. At first he figured it must have been his Dakota all dressed up, or maybe Monty, but just then, both his Dakota and Monty crossed the street toward the Paradise Twin.

  He stepped nearer to the window, opened it, not feeling the cold at all, his heart pounding in a way it never had, not even with the swarms.

  There, high up in the mountains: a person.

  the mysterious astronaut

  Dinnertime conversation came in spurts around Dakota’s coughing fits.

  And it wasn’t just the coughing.

  These last couple weeks, Kit had noticed a permanent sheen of sweat on her face. She’d already cut back on her time in Garden on the Roof, instead spending hours alone in her room. At night, when she climbed the stairs to the projection room to tuck him in, he heard the mighty struggle of her lungs to get air.

  “I’m worried about you,” said Lakie, stating the obvious.

  Dakota tried to muffle another cough, got out an unconvincing, “I’m fine,” and then ate a spoonful of corn as if to prove she was.

  But she wasn’t fine, not even close, because the symptoms of mononucleosis included, but were not limited to, extreme fatigue, sore throat, and fever (Humphries & Howard, 2006: A Beginner’s Guide to Infectious Diseases). Mononucleosis would be bad, but not as bad as Hodgkin’s lymphoma, cancer of the lymphatic system (Humphries & Howard, 2008: A Beginner’s Guide to Cancer), which affected the lymph nodes, which filtered out foreign organisms from the body, which certainly sounded like an important job. The thought of his Dakota’s blood full of foreign organisms made Kit want to walk out onto Main Street and scream at the sky. Whooping cough was the best-case scenario, according to his research in the William H. Taft Elementary School library. (Research that was, admittedly, limited to two men whose burning passion was to introduce people to ways in which they might die.) Still, this was a hope-for-the-best, prepare-for-the-worst situation.

  Kit would hope for whooping cough but prepare for Hodgkin’s lymphoma.

  “Morning’s Events,” said Lakie, trying to change the subject. She grabbed the brass apple and offered a brief account of the day’s target practice. It was conspicuous, to say the least, her choosing to speak when she didn’t have to.

  She’s as worried as I am.

  When Lakie was done, she passed the apple to Monty. “You guys don’t want to hear what I have to say.”

  “Go on,” said his Dakota.

  “Really?”

  “We’re not leaving Town,” she said, holding off a cough. “But you should have your say.”

  To his credit, Monty was concise. He said he’d done all the legwork, had the exact location of the Isles of Shoals, that it would be a trek, but doable.

  “Isles of Shoals?” Kit asked.

  “The safe zone is a cluster of islands called the Isles of Shoals.” He turned back to Dakota. “For what it’s worth, I’ve combed through enough of these recordings to know a legit opportunity when I hear it. This place—it’s as close as you get to a pre-DOS existence. Once you’re feeling better, I vote we pack up and go.”

  “It’s not a vote,” said Dakota.

  Monty looked at his sister, then Kit. He didn’t have to say anything; the words hung in the air like a giant question mark over the table: If we took a vote, where would we land?

  Kit would side with his Dakota, of course. Monty had to know this. Which meant even if Lakie voted to go, it would be split.

  But what if I didn’t? he thought. What if I voted to follow the breeze?

  The silence was broken by Dakota’s coughing. She leaned forward, grabbed the brass apple from Monty, and handed it to Kit.

  “Okay.” Kit set the apple beside his plate, wiped his mouth on his napkin, and cleared his throat. “Spacedog & Computer #632 turned out okay, I guess. Also, I saw someone today.”

  Whatever t
ension had weighed down the table during Monty’s share time now tripled in volume.

  Dakota set her fork by her plate. “What do you mean, honey?”

  “Just before curfew. I was standing by the windows in my classroom. I like looking out across the mountains. Thinking about breezes and the Final Frontier.”

  “The what?” said Monty.

  “Shh.” Lakie smiled at him. “Go on.”

  “I saw something. Someone. In the woods.” Kit reached below his chair and pulled out a book. He thought back to earlier, the shock of seeing a person in the mountains. But that shock turned to something else when he realized the person looked sort of familiar. In the library, he’d found the book he was looking for in the younger kids’ section, a picture book called You Will Go to the Moon. Because it had been published in 1959, ten years before anyone actually went to the moon, the people who’d made the book had no idea what going to the moon would actually look like, or how it would work.

  “The person I saw wore a mask. Or, like—a helmet, I guess. And a suit and gloves.” Kit opened the book to the first page, where two people in comical-looking spacesuits lunged through the air. “Like this. Only the suit was shinier. And gray and black.”

  Part of Kit was afraid they wouldn’t believe him; the other part was afraid they would, which would confirm he’d actually seen something so entirely unexplainable.

  “So like . . . an astronaut,” Monty said in a whisper.

  “Sort of,” said Kit. “Not as puffy.”

  After Kit finished a painting, there was always a moment of assessment, of looking the piece up and down and calculating its value. Until now, he’d never wondered how his assessment of their value might make them feel.

  But before anyone could think of anything to say, Dakota stood in a quick, erratic motion that rattled the table, and then stared straight up into the darkness of the high ceiling. “Look at that,” she said, but the light of the candle did not reach very far, so they found themselves staring into inky nothingness. “What is that?” Dakota said. “Like a—it’s a circle. Look at that. What a beautiful thing.”