There was a hesitation, then, “You don’t. We didn’t design it to return. It was a redundancy we had no need for. Too costly, in terms of resources.”
“So what do I do? I just saved the Earth. And now I suffocate out here?”
He nodded. “That’s pretty much it. Yes.”
The lights began to dim. One by one, the controls were going out. I lost my 360-degree perception of the ship. It was just me, strapped to a chair in the middle of nowhere, inside a flying teacup.
“How long do I have?”
“We’re closing down all your systems, but you’ve got a couple of hours, at least. We’re not going to evacuate the remaining air. That would be inhuman.”
“You know, in the world I came from, they would have given me a medal.”
“Obviously, we’re grateful.”
“So you can’t come up with any more tangible way to express your gratitude?”
“Not really. You’re a disposable part. A unit. We can’t mourn you any more than a wasps’ nest mourns the death of a single wasp. It’s not sensible and it’s not viable to bring you back.”
“And you don’t want this kind of firepower coming back toward the Earth, where it could potentially be used against you?”
“As you say.”
And then the screen went dark, with not so much as a good-bye. Do not adjust your set, I thought. Reality is at fault.
You become very aware of your breathing, when you only have a couple of hours of air remaining. In. Hold. Out. Hold. In. Hold. Out. Hold…
I sat there strapped to my seat in the half-dark, and I waited, and I thought. Then I said, “Hello? Is anybody there?”
A beat. The screen flickered with patterns. “Yes?”
“I have a request. Listen. You-you people, machines, whatever you are-you owe me one. Right? I mean I saved all your lives.”
“Continue.”
“I’ve got a couple of hours left. Yes?”
“About fifty-seven minutes.”
“Can you plug me back into the…the real world. The other world. The one I came from?”
“Mm? I don’t know. I’ll see.” Dark screen once more.
I sat and breathed, in and out, in and out, while I waited. I felt very peaceful. If it wasn’t for having less than an hour to live, I’d have felt just great.
The screen glowed. There was no picture, no pattern, no nothing. Just a gentle glow. And a voice, half in my head, half out of it, said, “You got a deal.”
There was a sharp pain at the base of my skull. Then blackness, for several minutes.
Then this.
That was fifteen years ago: 1984. I went back into computers. I own my computer store on the Tottenham Court Road. And now, as we head toward the new millennium, I’m writing this down. This time around, I married Susan. It took me a couple of months to find her. We have a son.
I’m nearly forty. People of my kind don’t live much longer than that, on the whole. Our hearts stop. When you read this, I’ll be dead. You’ll know that I’m dead. You’ll have seen a coffin big enough for two men dropped into a hole.
But know this, Susan, my sweet: my true coffin is orbiting the moon. It looks like a flying teacup. They gave me back the world, and you, for a little while. Last time I told you, or someone like you, the truth, or what I knew of it, you walked out on me. And maybe that wasn’t you, and I wasn’t me, but I don’t dare risk it again. So I’m going to write this down, and you’ll be given it with the rest of my papers when I’m gone. Good-bye.
They may be heartless, unfeeling, computerized bastards, leeching off the minds of what’s left of humanity. But I can’t help feeling grateful to them.
I’ll die soon. But the last twenty minutes have been the best years of my life.
Monday the 28th
I guess I’ve been following Scarlet for a long time now. Yesterday I was in Las Vegas. Walking across the parking lot of a casino, I found a postcard. There was a word written on it in crimson lipstick. One word: Remember. On the other side of the postcard was a highway in Montana.
I don’t remember what it is I’m meant to remember. I’m on the road now, driving north.
Tuesday the 29th
I’m in Montana, or maybe Nebraska. I’m writing this in a motel. There’s a wind gusting outside my room, and I drink black motel coffee, just like I’ll drink it tomorrow night and the night after that. In a small-town diner today I heard someone say her name. “Scarlet’s on the road,” said the man. He was a traffic cop, and he changed the subject when I got close and listened.
He was talking about a head-on collision. The broken glass glittered on the road like diamonds. He called me “Ma’am,” politely.
Wednesday the 30th
“It’s not the work that gets to you so bad,” said the woman. “It’s the way that people stare.” She was shivering. It was a cold night and she wasn’t dressed for it.
“I’m looking for Scarlet,” I told her.
She squeezed my hand with hers, then she touched my cheek, so gently. “Keep looking, hon,” she said. “You’ll find her when you’re ready.” Then she sashayed on down the street.
I wasn’t in a small town any longer. Maybe I was in Saint Louis. How can you tell if you’re in Saint Louis? I looked for some kind of arch, something linking East and West, but if it was there I missed it.
Later, I crossed a river.
Thursday the 31st
There were blueberries growing wild by the side of the road. A red thread was caught in the bushes. I’m scared that I’m looking for something that does not exist anymore. Maybe it never did.
I spoke to a woman I used to love today, in a cafe in the desert. She’s a waitress there, a long time ago.
“I thought I was your destination,” she told me. “Looks like I was just another stop on the line.”
I couldn’t say anything to make it better. She couldn’t hear me. I should have asked if she knew where Scarlet was.
Friday the 32nd
I dreamed of Scarlet last night. She was huge and wild, and she was hunting for me. In my dream, I knew what she looked like. When I woke I was in a pickup truck parked by the side of the road. There was a man shining a flashlight in the window at me. He called me “Sir” and asked me for ID.
I told him who I thought I was and who I was looking for. He just laughed and walked away, shaking his head. He was humming a song I didn’t know. I drove the pickup south, into the morning. Sometimes I fear this is becoming an obsession. She’s walking. I’m driving. Why is she always so far ahead of me?
Saturday the 1st
I found a shoebox that I keep things in. In a Jacksonville McDonald’s I ate a quarter pounder with cheese and a chocolate milkshake, and I spread everything I keep in the shoebox out on the table in front of me: the red thread from the blueberry bush; the postcard; a Polaroid photograph I found in some fennel-blown wasteland beside Sunset Boulevard-it shows two girls whispering secrets, their faces blurred; an audio cassette; some golden glitter in a tiny bottle I was given in Washington, D.C.; pages I’ve torn from books and magazines. A casino chip. This journal.
“When you die,” says a dark-haired woman at the next table, “they can make you into diamonds now. It’s scientific. That’s how I want to be remembered. I want to shine.”
Sunday the 2nd
The paths that ghosts follow are written on the land in old words. Ghosts don’t take the interstate. They walk. Is that what I’m following here? Sometimes it seems like I’m looking out through her eyes. Sometimes it feels like she’s looking out through mine.
I’m in Wilmington, North Carolina. I write this on an empty beach, while the sunlight glitters on the sea, and I feel so alone.
We make it up as we go along. Don’t we?
Monday the 3rd