Life on the Preservation, US Edition (31 page)

“I love you, brother,” she said.

Emotion grabbed at Ian’s heart and he fought it off. Zach gripped his other hand.

“Everybody concentrate, concentrate on staying.”

They both squeezed down hard on Ian’s hands, these almost-people.
Fuck it,
Ian thought.
Fuck everything
. All he really wanted to be was alone, the way things used to be. It was easier that way.

Shadows, like blowing laces of coal dust, spun out of the faces of his sister and friend. Ian closed his eyes tight, bearing down with the full force of his concentration, rooting himself to the floor.

Suddenly his hands were empty.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

M
ORNING LIGHT PENETRATED
the tilted slats of the window blind. Ian stood alone in the office. The port bottle was gone. So were the paper cups. Ian opened the top file cabinet drawer. No bottle. He opened the other drawers. Files but no bottle. Ness said she bought the bottle yesterday, so she would have it when he and Zach arrived. She bought it while in an awakened state. But the office re-gened the way it probably always did, as if yesterday had never happened.

Ian reached around his back and yanked the sketchpad from the waist of his jeans. If objects always restored themselves to their original place and condition with every Advent, then why did the sketchpad stay with him?

Maybe the same reason the mural remained on the wall of his apartment – faded but
there
.

Ian flipped through the sketchpad. On a sheet in the middle he’d penned: THIS WILL NOT DISAPPEAR. 8:15 PM.

The letters and numbers were sharp, ink rich and black.

“Okay, genius,” Ian said. “What’s it mean?”

He had no idea.

He looked around the empty office. Despite the morning light, it felt gloomy, the furniture dead, inert matter. The clock stared at him. Suddenly he wanted to talk to someone, even an android. Shouldn’t Zach be calling about now? He called
every
morning. Ian fished the phone out of his pocket and waited. He hadn’t really expected Ness and Zach to remain with him, to become unstuck. They weren’t like Kylie or him. They were strictly Preservation constructs. The truth was, Ian hadn’t really
wanted
them to stay.

What the fuck, of course he had wanted them to stay.

Except, maybe not. Maybe they were becoming too real, too close inside his own personal bubble.

Ian slid his phone open and thumbed Zach’s number. It went straight to voicemail. He tried again and attained the same result. Suddenly he was more afraid than at any other time since the first Advent.

M
ATTHEW
C
HADWICK RECLINED
in his Naugahyde lounger with a bottle of Bud in front of the plasma TV. It was almost midnight, and drinking a beer right now meant he’d be up dribbling in the toilet before the night was over, no matter how much he peed before bed. Or maybe not. Matt was afraid to go to sleep at all. It wasn’t the nightmare, his bullet gone astray, that kid taking it in the neck, dying right there on the sidewalk while Matt knelt over him, helplessly. He
hated
that nightmare, that memory. Hated the stale residue of guilt he woke with almost every morning. But tonight what he was most afraid of was the failure of the hypno-therapy, what did she call it, the
suggestion
that would give him peace at last. What a word. Suggestion. Like, I
suggest
you don’t feel like shit.

But maybe. Just maybe. It would work.

His wife had gone to bed two hours ago. These days he and Connie slept in separate rooms. A few weeks ago, during a night of violent thrashing dreams, he’d elbowed her in the eye. Sleeping with him had become
dangerous
. This situation above everything else was what had driven Matt to the hypno-therapist. Every other approach had failed to help him. His marriage was collapsing around his ears.

Matt held the Bud in his left hand and the television remote in his right. He flipped between three stations: A
MythBusters
rerun, ESPN, and a subtitled French movie on the Canadian station. He liked the look of the actress in the movie – she reminded him of Audrey Hepburn – but he didn’t bother reading the subtitles. Because it was a foreign movie he was hoping that the actress would sooner or later find herself topless.

Matt felt something, then, and narrowed his eyes, listening to his body. Strokes had killed both his parents. Matt, now forty-seven years old, was always more or less waiting for his.

The inset clock of the on-screen cable menu flipped to 12:00AM.

A peculiar, shadowy web spun across his vision. A sudden light shift occurred, and the night was
gone
. The television was off, so was the lamp. Pigeons cooed outside the apartment window.

Matt didn’t move. Except his eyes. His eyes slipped left and right, taking in the room. He lifted his empty hands and stared at them. In the bedroom Connie stirred. He turned his head. She came shuffling out in her robe and flip-flop slippers, yawning. She was wide awake and bright-eyed first thing in the morning, as always.

“Matt, what’s wrong? Did you stay up all night again?”

He stared at her.

“Matthew?”

“I don’t know,” he said. “I don’t
know
.”

I
AN STOOD OUTSIDE
the lobby of Zach’s building and thumbed the buzzer, waited, thumbed it again. He checked his watch. Eight-thirty. He dug out his key and let himself in. He climbed the stairs slowly, remembering the last time he’d been here, the time Zach shot himself in the head.
We should start our own suicide club,
Ian thought.
What would the t-shirt say?

He knocked on the door. It was an old building, fully renovated. The walls and doors were thick, the hallway carpeted. Silent. The door seemed to absorb his knock. He hovered his finger over the buzzer but hesitated, afraid. Instead, Ian used the spare key. The condo smelled like a pineapple pizza. The fish tank burbled placidly. Ian moved down the entry hall, like a nervous burglar. He looked in the bedroom. It was empty, the bed unmade. He continued to the living room. The blinds were tilted closed. The lighted fish tank looked like a TV tuned to a vividly dull station.

Zach was asleep on the sofa. A gaming magazine lay open to a picture of Lara Croft busting out of skin-tight leathers. Next to the magazine was an empty wine bottle, a roach clip, and a tube of Lubriderm. Ian grimaced, then leaned over and tapped Zach on the head.

Like tapping a land mine.

“Guh!” Zach flung himself off the couch, tangled in the blanket. The wine bottle rolled across the floor.

“It’s me!” Ian said.

“What the
fuck
, man?”

“Sorry. You didn’t answer your phone or the door, so I got worried.”

Zach fumbled his glasses on, squinted at the minimalist clock on the wall, two wire-thin hands that glowed neon blue, no numbers or hash marks. “It’s practically
dawn
. What’s going on, did somebody die?”

“No. I was just worried.”

“Worried about
what?
”

“I don’t know.”

Zach stood up, scratching his head. He nudged the Lubriderm under the couch with his foot.

“Okay,” he said. “Coffee.”

In the kitchen Zach pushed a button on the coffee machine and a red light winked on. Soon black coffee began trickling into the pot.

“So what’s going on?” he said. “For real. I know nothing except the Apocalypse is going to haul your dead ass out of bed before noon.”

Ian cleared his throat. “Don’t you remember anything weird?”

Zach removed his glasses, wiped them on his t-shirt, which was white with big black letters spelling BEER, and replaced them. “Weird? You mean besides a minute ago when you tried to give me a fucking heart attack? Uh, no.”

“You don’t have a feeling like stuff’s been going on?”

“Stuff,” Zach said.

“If I say ‘Preservation’ what do you think?”

“Strawberry jam?”

“Not
preserves
. Preservation. I’m serious, man.”

“I know. But I can’t tell what you’re serious
about
.”

“Just think for a minute. You know that deja vu feeling? Are you getting that at all?”

Zach poured coffee into a Mindwerks mug and handed it Ian. “No, man. What I’ve got is a ‘What the fuck are you talking about’ feeling.’”

“You really don’t remember anything, do you.”

“Anything about
what?
”

“Never mind.”

A
FEW HOURS
later Ian stood by the side of Aurora Avenue North. Traffic out of the bubble roared by him. He waited until he saw Vanessa’s car, then started waving frantically. She blasted by, tapped her brakes but never pulled over. Ian ran to the Chief, parked on a side street, and followed her downtown.

She was unlocking her office when he tucked into the curb. At the sound of the engine racket, she turned. Her face opened up in surprise and happiness at the sight of him. Mostly surprise. Ian killed the engine and removed his helmet.

“Icky!”

“Hi, Ness.”

“
Your
hi Ness to you, buster. I’m so happy to see you. It’s been almost a year, you know.”

“I know.”

“Icky, what’s wrong?”

“Nothing, I guess. I wanted to talk to you.”

“I have a client in half an hour. Can we do lunch right after?”

Ian felt sick to his stomach. They were both gone, really gone. Waking Vanessa or Zach up again would require starting from scratch. And even then, he wondered if it would work. Ness had feared being rejected out of the Preservation, and that’s exactly what had happened. This was a brand new android; he sensed it, knew it. Ian was the only aware person in the city.

A squat, angry man with a few remnants of red hair came running at them.

“Hey, hey–” He was out of breath when he reached them. “What did you
do
to me?” he said.

“Mr. Chadwick, what’s wrong?”

“
Everything’s
wrong. My God, I think I’m losing my mind.”

Ian interrupted, “She hypnotized you. You’re that cop.”

Chadwick glared at Ian. “What do you know about it, kid?

“I… nothing, really.”

“I want to know what’s happening to me.”

Vanessa touched his shoulder reassuringly. “Let’s go inside, Mr. Chadwick. We’ll talk about it.”

“Sure, okay.”

She gave Ian a questioning look. He just shrugged and watched them go into the building.

H
E RETREATED TO
his apartment to await the next Advent. It occurred while he was lying on his back reading a battered paperback copy of
Notes from
the Underground
. It was one of those books he thought he’d get around to eventually but eventually never seemed to arrive. Now ‘eventually’ was a steady state. He picked up this particular copy of Dostoyevsky’s novel from Twice Sold Tales that very afternoon. At midnight the print started to wriggle on the page, lacy shadows spinning out of the paper. Worms moved queasily in his stomach. Ian looked up from the book.

There was a sudden light shift, and the book was gone.

He stared at the ceiling, waiting for Zach to call. The phone remained silent. His eyes grew heavy and he slept a few hours. When he got up, groggy, his head aching, he thought about beginning the process of waking his friend again. There didn’t seem to be any point. As soon as Zach become self-consciously aware of the situation, the Preservation would get a clue and reject him. Ian and Zach’s big plan of waking up everyone on the Preservation was dead. Really, it died as soon as Kylie disappeared. How many Advents would it be before he began to doubt she had ever existed?

He thought of his sister and her morphogenetic bullshit, and he wondered about that cop. Was he still awake? What did Vanessa think about his story? How many times would the cop
tell
her his story? Maybe not that many before he got rejected himself.

Thinking about Vanessa depressed Ian, so he put her in a locked compartment of his mind, the one right next to the locked compartment that held Zach, and another – a bank vault, really, that held Kylie. Then he went out to re-buy
Notes from
the Underground.

T
HIS TIME WHEN
the Advent came he anticipated it. He knew the book was going to disappear, and it pissed him off.
Stay, stay, stay
. In his mind he heard Kylie saying those words the first time he came unstuck from the endless cycle of Advents. And remembering her, the emotion of that moment overtook him. His chest tightened with grief and loneliness. He gripped the book like a vise.
Stay, motherfucker.

The queasy feeling began.

Shadows spun forth, and in the sudden light shift... the book remained in his hand.

He held it up, turning it before his gaze as if it were some incomprehensible artifact. He could fix things permanently to the Advent by an act of desperate concentration – like when he tried to push the despair out of his head when he made WHO CARES.

He didn’t read anymore that Advent; he painted. His apartment became Goya’s Spanish house, only sloppier. Ian covered the walls with his own ‘Black Paintings’. He was totally alone in the city and would be forever. Even death wouldn’t release him but merely expel him from this jacked body. By late that night the walls reflected his reality. Buildings loomed like doom-shadowed giants over avenues thronged with soulless androids. Ian revised the faded mural he had put up a few Advents past, first by spraying over
know WHO you are
. Ian knew who he was, all right. More importantly, he knew
what
he was: Fucked.

He was trying to figure out how to do the ceiling, when the rain started. Just before midnight, he ripped off his respirator and stood naked in the middle of the room, his pale body streaked with sweat and paint. It was like removing his mask inside a paint shed; the fumes infiltrated his brain.

“Stay!” he shouted. “Stay, stay, stay!”