Life on the Preservation, US Edition (27 page)

Ian almost audibly shifted gears. Staring at the ceiling, he said, “Okay. That guy I told you about? The Curator?”

“Yeah.

“He’s an alien, but not like the ones in the bright spinning ships. Those ones are called Hunters and they’re pretty badass. The Curator, he works for something called the Cloud. This Cloud goes around screwing with races on other planets so they evolve in a certain way.”

“What way?”

“The way the Cloud evolved, I guess. So they don’t need bodies anymore?”

“Why’s
that
good?”

“Fuck, I don’t know. Who said it was good? I’m just telling you what he told me.”

“So humans are one of the races that got screwed with.”

“Right. Only, the Hunters don’t go for it.
They
zip around looking for races that the Cloud is working on, and wipe them out.”

“
Why?
”

“They don’t like the Cloud messing with natural evolution. You know, everybody’s got to be pure and all that shit. So they found Earth and they–”

“Wiped us out. They sound like Nazis. When I flew in here with Father Jim, one of their ships chased us and shot us down. I bailed just in time.”

“Who’s Father Jim?”

“This old guy. I’ll tell you later. Keep going. All that stuff about the Cloud and Hunters is interesting, but it doesn’t explain why you think you’re a ghost.”

“I said not a ghost, not really. The Curator said I was some kind of rare freak. Okay, not a
freak
– but rare. Like an early version of what they were trying to turn the whole human race into? So when my body died, I kept hanging around and like started haunting
this
body, which isn’t really my body. It’s one of those things, like everybody else in the city, except you. An android.”

“You’re not a thing.”

“The androids are perfect imitations of real bodies. You can’t tell the difference. And check this out. They act like the originals act because they’re
connected
to the originals. Like the tech that keeps this whole thing going can reach back in time and tap the minds of the original people the templates are based on, and it uses that to make the android people act real. It gets the mind stuff while the people are sleeping.”

“The real people asleep in the past?”

“Right. Only there isn’t any past or future or anything, not if you’re the Cloud. It’s all one big picture.”

Kylie absorbed this for a while then said, “So you died but instead of really dying you just went out of your body and then started taking over this one you’re in now.”

“I know it sounds weird.”

“Weird? No, what’s weird about it?”

He turned his head and looked at her. They both laughed. Then Ian’s face went all serious and he started to get off the bed. “This is too fucked up,” he said. Kylie pulled him back down.

“No,” she said. “Don’t go clear your head again. Stay with me, okay?”

“Okay, okay.”

“Do you know why this place even exists, this Dome city?”

“It’s some kind of museum. The Cloud wanted to preserve what we were like, to show other evolving races. The Dome’s even called a Preservation. I guess there’s a bunch of them.”

They were quiet a moment. Kylie held on tight to Ian’s hand. She took a breath then risked asking the question that was burning her up to ask. “Ian? Tell me how you died.”

He stared at the ceiling as if he hadn’t heard her. With his free hand he tapped his first two fingers pensively on his lower lip, a thing she noticed he did sometimes when something was bothering him or he didn’t want to talk – when he wanted to check out without actually leaving.

“Ian?”

“I don’t know. Probably I killed myself.”

She pushed his fingers away from his mouth. “
Probably
you killed yourself?”

“I killed myself, okay? Happy?”

He jerked his hand out of her grip and swung off the bed, and this time she couldn’t stop him. He stood in the middle of the room, looking like he wanted to get away, looking cornered.

“You push too much,” he said, half mumbling it, not looking at her.

She hated how he said things and didn’t say them at the same time, like he wanted to have it both ways. She kept her mouth shut and waited.

“Never mind,” he said, still not looking at her.

“I’m sorry,” Kylie said.

“It’s not important.”

“Killing yourself. It’s not important?”
Just shut up,
Kylie told herself.
Just shut your stupid mouth for once.

Finally, he looked at her. “You know what?”

“What?”

“The Curator, he messed with my brain. So I’d forget everything and just be a good little android. I thought I was fighting it, like it’s no fucking way I’m going to forget. But I don’t think I was fighting all that hard. There’s a lot of stuff I really
want
to forget, like taking all those pills, or hurting Sarah so bad, or what a fucking loser I am. You know? It’s worth forgetting stuff like that.”

“Ian–”

“Let me finish. You remember Zach?”

“Your friend, the one you talked to before we went to see my grandparents.”

“Right. He called a little while ago. He calls every day. Every
Advent
. He always remembers stuff about being on the Preservation. Even when I forget totally, he remembers. He remembers and he’s not even a
real person
. I woke him up when all this first started and I was so scared and alone. But you know what? The Curator hardly even had to erase my memory, because I was already doing that by myself. It was Zach who kept jerking me out of it, because Zach
wants
to be alive. Me? I just want to hide. I’m nothing but a–”

Kylie threw herself off the bed and slapped him. It wasn’t much of a slap. She’d pulled back, shocked at herself. So it was almost like one of those Italian slaps in a Godfather movie, like a
love
slap. Except not really, because even though she pulled back, there was still some real heat, some real anger, behind it.

Ian stared at her, touching his cheek as if he could feel the fading red mark. “Why’d you do that?”

“Because you were pissing me off.”

“How? I wasn’t even talking about you.”

“Look, I’m sorry. But I just hate that shit when you put yourself down. You’re not a loser. You’re special. You’re probably one of the most special people who ever lived. You’re – what? One in a billion, like the Curator called you. You can live outside your freaking body.”

“If you call that living.”

“Don’t try to be funny when I’m being serious. You can’t be all the time putting yourself down, not even in your own head. I did that. I did it a lot. My dad checked out when I was a kid and I always thought he left because of me, like I did something wrong, like I was too much trouble. I never said any of that out loud, but it’s what I thought, so that’s even worse. That’s how I got hooked up with Father Jim. I hated myself, and that kind of hate leaves the door wide open for an asshole like Jim to walk through. Ian, I really
loved
my dad and he left anyway.” Her voice snagged on a sharp emotion, and finally she stopped talking.

“I loved my dad, too,” Ian said, and Kylie heard a whole world of pain behind the simple words. She hugged him as hard as she could and he hugged her back like he was trying to break her in half.

After a while, her face buried in his chest, she said, “You want to hear something? Jim and I had a mission when we flew in here.”

“What mission?”

“Blow up the Dome. That’s what that locator thing was for, to help us find the machines that make the Dome work. People outside think this place is some kind of zoo, or like you said, a museum. Everybody’s dying out there and they never got a chance to fight back – to fight the Hunters. So this was the last chance.”

“The Hunters didn’t even make the Dome. Besides, if we blow up the Preservation everybody dies.”

“Nobody’s real anyway.”

“You are.”

“So are you.”

“My body’s not real.”

“It sure
acts
real.”

“Yeah.”

“Ian, I don’t want to blow up the Preservation.”

“Okay.”

“Maybe we can just, I don’t know, live here?”

“You mean pretend it’s all normal.”

“For a little while, why not? Outside the Preservation the Hunters flattened almost everything then they poisoned the sky. The survivors, and there aren’t very many, are all getting sick. Nobody will live much longer. Even if we could blow up the Dome or escape from here, we’d end up dead because of the poison. I might die anyway. Shit, I absorbed enough poison. But in here maybe we could live. Maybe I wouldn’t ever get sick. I don’t know. Probably I would. But maybe not.”

“I doubt we could blow up the Preservation even if we tried,” Ian said.

“Yeah, probably not.”

Ian’s phone started ringing. They both looked at it. The phone blinked and trilled and vibrated on the bedside table like a little creature trying desperately to get their attention.

“It’s Zach,” Ian said. “He never gives up.”

“That’s because he doesn’t know he’s a fake person.”

“Maybe he
isn’t
a fake person.”

“They’re all fake people. That’s what you said. Androids. Ian, you should see them when they get bounced out of here. They turn into zombies after a while, like big dumb windup dolls that can’t stop going. Like that stupid Energizer Bunny from the commercials.”

“A little while ago you said something about your grandparents. You didn’t say your fake android grandparents.”

“It’s a stupid trick is all,” Kylie said. “Like really good special effects. They seemed real – you know, like those blue people in
Avatar
– but they weren’t real.”

The phone stopped ringing.

Ian said, “But what if they thought they were real? I mean Zach and your grandparents and whoever else. My sister, maybe.”

“But they’re
not
real.”

Ian tapped his lip with his fingertips. “Maybe a fake android person who believes he’s real is just as good as a real person who knows he’s real. I mean, in this place, what’s the difference?”

COMMUNION

C
HARLES SAT IN
a pew next to Curtis Sarmir. Fewer than a hundred people occupied the vast space within St. James Cathedral. Curtis described himself as an occasional Catholic who happened to adore St. James. They were at that point, the Curator and the android, where the android wanted to share things it adored. The Curator, who now thought of himself mostly as Charles Noble, found he was always interested to hear what Curtis had to say.

“Of course,” Curtis whispered close to Charles’s ear, “it’s all hocus-pocus. Beautiful hocus-pocus.”

“Of course,” Charles whispered back.

They held hands and observed the ceremony of transubstantiation. The priest lifted a golden chalice, made the sign of the cross, and drank. “This is the blood of Christ.”
Because he believes it is,
Charles thought. October sun lit up stained glass depictions of suffering and redemption. Curtis squeezed Charles’s hand and leaned over again.

“I’m really glad you came with me today.”

Charles smiled. “It’s lovely.”

He considered the possibility that the Cloud was a manifestation of hocus-pocus. Once, the Cloud had been a sort of Trinity. Three planets and their billions of inhabitants, united into transphysical singularity. The Ascension – those billions becoming the Cloud. And within the comforting light of the Cloud, the Curator’s individuality had effectively been obliterated in the peace of an everlasting dream, and sent forth only occasionally to manage Preservation museums.

But now, abandoned while the Cloud retreated further into remote time and space,
Charles
began to forget the dream... and remember what he had been before singularity.

“You know,” he whispered to Curtis, “hocus-pocus is beguiling, but I have always loved more practical and useful art forms.”

“Then it’s good you own a gallery.”

“Yes. It’s what I used to do. It’s why I’m doing it now.”

A blue-haired matron two pews in front of them turned and held a finger to her wrinkled, pink-painted lips. Charles and Curtis smiled at her, and she smiled back.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

“I
CKY,
” V
ANESSA SAID
, “I think I can’t believe you.”

They huddled in a Starbucks: Ian, Kylie, Zach and Vanessa. Ian retold the whole story to his sister, leaving out the part about everyone but Kylie being regenerating android constructs. That was also the part he left out when he brought Kylie over to Zach’s an hour ago. One thing at a time.

Kylie drank espresso and contributed nothing much to the conversation. Ian wished she were more onboard with his idea of waking up android people. Maybe she would be, eventually. The thing was, in pre-Preservation life Ian had a crappy-to-nonexistent relationship with his sister. What had developed between them here, on the Preservation, was more real than what they’d had in the so-called real world – even if he did have to restart the familial relationship every Advent. Ian would never see his real sister again, but he had the android-memory-matrix version. Only he didn’t want to
pretend
the fake Vanessa was real, because then he’d just be having a brother-sister relationship with himself, like a little kid pretending his stuffed toy was a real bear. If he could convince Vanessa to believe she was a real bear, then she
would
be one.

“But she already believes she’s real,” Kylie had argued on the way over to Zach’s.

Yeah. But that didn’t count, because Ness didn’t know she was supposed to be
unreal
. First he had to sell her the idea of the regenerating day. Then Ian could tell her about androids. Her and Zach, too. It all made sense in Ian’s head, but it was hard to get it out and explain it to Kylie. “I don’t really get the point,” Kylie had said.

“Yeah, I was afraid of that,” Ian said to his sister when she declared her disbelief in alien Preservation Domes. “But there’s a quick way to prove it to you. One of us could leave town. For instance, if Zach strolled past the point of no return or whatever you want to call it, and he
didn’t
return, then you’d know he got absorbed in the bubble thing over the city.”