The Revival (4 page)

Doesn't look like the whole world,
I say.
Looks like some boring-ass papers.

You're wrong,
he says.
They're the most exciting thing you've ever seen.

Fuck you,
I say. Kind of like somebody else might say,
Oh?

Let me put it this way,
says Chapel.
How would you like to be the most powerful person on the planet?

You clowning me? Think I'm a punk?

No,
says Chapel.
I think you have the launch codes to the United States's strategic nuclear arsenal in your hands.

I look at the papers again, and it comes into focus.

Holy shit.

Seems too good to be true.
Okay, what makes me so lucky? I mean, you came to us with this.

Easy,
says Chapel.
I need your help. It's going to take some very violent, very unprincipled people to keep me alive through the next few days.

What do you have planned for the next few days?

See that picture there? Looks like an old walkie-talkie?

I nod. It's a lumpy black piece of hardware.

That's the biscuit,
says Chapel.
Whoever has that, and these codes, has control of the biggest nuclear arsenal in the world. That means he has a gun pointed at the head of every man, woman, and child on the face of the globe.

I like the sound of that. After all, if you can destroy something, that means you control it.

Okay, then where's the biscuit?

Chapel looks, for once, like he's not on top of the world. He says,
Your old buddy Jefferson. Him and his friends.

Perfect.

So,
I say,
we help you get this biscuit thing…

And I give you the codes.

I don't want to blow everything up.

Well, that's not strictly true. I mean, it would be pretty cool to launch all those missiles. See them streaking through the air as if you were keying the sky like a car door. But what would you do after?

You don't have to,
he says.
You just have to convince people you're willing to. And then you can have anything you want. Anything in the world.

Like I said, somebody up there really likes me. Evan, King of America.

Then one of the soldiers comes in, whispers in my ear the way I told them to do.

We found your sister.

AN HOUR LATER AND WE'RE still safe. And still trapped.

Kath and I pace the aisles of the store, looking for something useful. But the laptops and the phones, silvery lozenges propped on the long, altar-like wooden tables, are magics from the past, with nothing to communicate. Are there places where these smooth relics still coax information from the air? Apparently so. Here, they're just oblong slabs of aluminum stuffed with junk.

“Should've listened to me and jettisoned the freak,” says Kath. “You've done it this time, cutie.”

“Don't call me that.”

“Cutie? Why? You don't think you're cute?”

“I don't think I want you to act like things are cool between us.”

Kath doesn't seem fazed by this. Unfazability is one of her superpowers.

“Yeah, well, sorry. I was mad,” says Kath. “'Cause you left me in the lurch. Or rather, in the lab.”

“You were dead,” I say.

“I was, but I changed my mind,” she says. “I had something to live for. For the first time.”

“What's that?” I say.

“Seriously?” Kath stops kicking at the door and looks at me.

“You and me?”

“You
said
it. You said you love me.”

“I said it…” I don't know how to say it except to say it plainly. “…because you were dying.”

It feels horrible. But it's the fairest thing I can find to say. I'm worried that this will hurt her feelings, but Kath doesn't seem particularly bothered.

“That's what you
thought
. That's what you tell yourself. The fact of the matter is, you don't know
what
you feel. But I do.”

I shake my head. “Donna—”

“Is dead. Or as good as dead. You think you'll ever see her again? Look. Donna's a good kid. I
like
her. If I didn't, I'd have put a bullet in her a while ago. But you only
think
you love her because she's not around. You're after the unattainable. That's just a defense mechanism.”

“What are you, a therapist?”

“I should be. I've been to enough of them,” she says. She blows a strand of greasy blond hair from her eyes. “Personal, family, couples, you name it. And you are trying to keep yourself from getting intimately involved with me by pining after some chick who's thousands of miles from here. It's easier for you that way.”

I consider it, a thought refracting through months and miles in the space of a heartbeat. Is it true? Am I just using the memory of Donna, a memory that morphs in the remembering, to keep myself away from the edge of Kath?

I remember how we met. An embrace on a subway platform. A night on the floor of the Metropolitan. A farewell at the lab as a tear of blood coursed from her eye.

Here in this back corridor, the sounds of the Uptowners trying to smash their way in have receded. Kath stands there, arms akimbo, hip jutting, her weight planted on one foot, radiating, as she always does, a beauty so blatant it's practically comical. There are definitely… feelings. And not just physical.

Maybe Donna really is gone for good. Maybe this weird jumble of emotions that Kath stirs up in me is something like love.

The last time I saw Donna, I was in the navy chopper, pulling away from the
Ronald Reagan
, our escape attempt botched. Donna lay on the flight deck looking up, getting smaller as a gout of flame spilled from the fuel hose she had just disconnected, saving the rest of us. I shouted her name, but the chop of the blades ate every other sound.

Donna wouldn't give up on me. I know it. She wouldn't just move on. She'd try to find her way back, or get me out of here.

“So?” says Kath. Only a moment has passed. We're still rummaging through the Apple Store, with no way out.

“So let's find a way out of here,” I say. She frowns, turns to the door again, and kicks. The door gives way, and hardware spills out of the breach. Inside, a king's ransom in dead tech but no sign of a back door.

I go back to the front of the store and check in on Brainbox. He's awake, his eyes staring up at the ceiling. He mutters to himself, face waxy and slick with sweat. If we don't get him some help soon…

Then he looks at me and speaks. “Jefferson. Jefferson.”

I lean down next to him.

“BB. I'm here. We're going to get you help.”

He seems aware enough of our situation to look around weakly and laugh. It turns into a cough that feels like it'll rattle him to pieces. “Sure. But in the meanwhile. I have an idea.”

THE WORLD IS DIMMING AND LOSING
its purchase on the firmament resolving to liquid and disappearing through the hole in my stomach like the axis mundi they called it long ago the navel of the world the wormhole from heaven to earth I wonder if as I thought when I was a child when my eyes close for good the whole universe will simply disappear what a surprise it would be for everyone else to find out that they have only been tools and toys of my consciousness but no I realized long ago that the energy and computation required to maintain such an illusion just for me was more than any good efficient and parsimonious reason I could think of for it no the world will go on worlding and people will go on peopling and be about their business of lying cheating killing and stealing as ever and I will not be its experiencer but merely a pair of eyes shut on the monster with fourteen billion eyes but like a shark's teeth when one breaks another takes its place no if I want to make the childhood daydream come true and wink out the world I must use the biscuit and call forth the holy fire of the sun when they dropped the first bomb it was even hotter than the sun right at the center probably better to have been right there than half a mile away and your skin sliding off your body and hanging like a burial shroud that was the uranium bomb and they had a plutonium bomb and they wanted to see how that would work so they dropped it three days later before the enemy had a chance to surrender which would have prevented the experiment conducted in righteous purpose and turned it into an atrocity which of course it wasn't it was and it was nothing stacked up against the babies I can summon with the numbers in my head the A-bomb was a match compared to the house fire I can start with the new warheads not to mention the dust choking the atmosphere bringing winter forever I'll do it what does all this mean to me when I'm gone why should I save them what did they ever do for me but laugh and look sidelong only she only Chrysanthemum ever mattered a single damn and she's gone where well who knows really she wasn't even she just a bunch of software on a computer made of meat that thought it was a person and thought it loved a person who was what I think is me really I have already made the decision and just don't know it I have decided to kill them all because it's time to move on and wipe creation's slate clean so that maybe something better might come about but they've set down the biscuit way over there a world away five feet away beyond my reach and my graying flesh will not carry me that far so when he appears from the back I say Jefferson I know a way to get help if you give me the biscuit he says why does he suspect that I'm going to do it no Jefferson likes to think the best of people he'd feel it'd be rude to accuse me of wanting to destroy the world but still he's concerned and so I tell him I can adjust the frequency of the device and send out a distress call whoever it was in those helicopters will receive it and come and he gets a light in his eye the way they always do when I figure something out for them and then I know I have him and he hands me the biscuit and I flip open its keypad cover but the device is dead and I could almost cry at the injustice of it the knife in my hand and the neck of the world beneath it but I cannot make the cut but then I remember where we are and I say get the batteries out of the laptops and bring me tools from the Genius Bar and the back room and they spring to action you can still hear the rattling of the gate as the Uptowners try to get at us I wonder are they clever enough to find the cargo entrance out back or are they just sniffing at their prey like dogs once I had a tribe and for a while I was beloved but only by Chrysanthemum not the rest they just loved the clean water and the working generators and who will they remember when they tell the story of the Cure not me no they will remember Jefferson though he was only the lab rat even he will die when I unleash the fire it is too bad but he had his chance to put it all back together and he failed Chrysanthemum when the nuke hits will my atoms drift with the wind to find yours in the Astor Court and in a million years can something come of the both of us no the odds are against it there are really too many atoms it was much better when it was just a singularity if only I could take us back there rewind time we would touch again but then I would lose you again by unmeeting you and we would be unborn what a waste of energy it all is but then what else does energy have to do than become matter Jefferson hands me the batteries and the tools and I work at them as they hold them gently ease a folded jacket behind my head look to one another with sorrowful sorrow and I am suddenly engulfed by a wave of sympathy and they are just poor witting creatures like me oh my poor people what if I could have felt this connection before why deny me it I look at their faces each suddenly dear will I kill them all I must I must finish this fix it all the light comes on the rubber tiles of the keypad illuminate and I begin there good-bye my friends it is done it is accomplished