The Irreversible Reckoning

  ***

  I fell asleep that night thinking about an episode of this long-running British scifi show we had watched for my History of Television class. It was another relic from the so-called “Golden Age of Television,” and my teacher had included this show because a) it had been on for over fifty years, thus making it the longest running science-fiction program in not only British history, but in American history, too (even though in those days, he said, at least in terms of pop culture, America and Britain were still pretty allied), and b) because it represented a trend in what was popular at the time, and what was popular was sci-fi and action and fantasy, as well as traditional dramas. Sci-fi and action and fantasy and superheroes had become in vogue, and why, my teacher asked rhetorically? Because the world was scary, and we liked to watch the heroes face the bad guys and win, and we liked to imagine a world where the past, present, and future are managed by one man, a solitary hero, a lonely, benevolent traveler who continually swoops in to save the human race from destruction by its own hand or by the hands of alien invaders. Pangaeans had been coming to our planet for centuries, so they had more than likely seen this show. I wished I were close enough to any of the Pangaeans in Luna Moors to ask if they knew anyone who had seen it, and what those people thought of it. I had loved it, and I had made Alice watch a bunch of episodes with me, and she had loved it, too.

  Anyway, we watched all the episodes, and there was one that featured Agatha Christie, and though this is really sad, that was the first I had heard of her. She was a prolific writer who had written several classic mystery books, and I had never heard of her in school. I wondered if any of her books had somehow offended the Allegiance Board, and that was why they weren’t taught in schools anymore. Or perhaps they had offended the Family Coalition. It was rare we knew which side had taken any particular action. But either way, Agatha Christie had become a favorite of Eli and Lara, like I said. As I laid on Eli’s other sofa, tossing and turning all night, asleep but not resting, my mind fully awake, I thought of those ominous words he had said so airily just before he passed out. “And then there were none.”

  Say he, Alice, and John did meet their ends. Say they did crash. I would be left alive, so he should have said “And then there was one.” But instead, he had said, “And then there were none,” so he hadn’t included me in his speeding-car metaphor, which had been kind of depressing and provoked the sensitive, needy little wimp in me to whine, “Well, what about me?” which is disgusting, truly, and embarrassing to admit.

  Well, Brynna’s voice said, and weirdly, when I heard it, my legs stopped kicking, my heart slowed, and my mind cleared, If you lost them all, would you want to live? Would you want to be one man, with no one else?

  Of course I wouldn’t. I always said it: I couldn’t fathom my life without Alice. I couldn’t fathom it just being her and me, either, though. I couldn’t fathom losing every person I had ever loved. It was not that he had seemingly not included me in the metaphor, it was that he had included me, and I was a passive passenger, along for the ride, perhaps against my will, but probably not. Because we all knew I would come around. I would put myself back at Alice’s side, and not only that, I would see her reasoning, and I would get to where she needed me to be, to where I needed me to be. I was having some growing pains, but they would pass, and I’d be back. I thought. I hoped. Even if I wasn’t a passive passenger, destined to die beside them because they and the war in which we were fighting were forces beyond my control, even if I was somehow in control of it, it didn’t make me any less dead. His words haunted me because once we were all gone, that was it. We were gone. Every one of us. All gone. Vanished. Erased. Like we never were.

  You need to rest, Quinn, Brynna told me, You’ve got a lot of work to do. Starting tomorrow, you have much to find and see and learn and do. Your instincts are right, so you have to follow them, but you won’t be able to do that if you don’t sleep.

  Because I was in that space between dreaming and waking, a question that would sound strange or random if spoken out loud, in the waking hours, in the light of day, sounded totally normal to my ears, and to hers, too, I knew.

  Are you resting, Brynna? Are you sleeping forever?

  I heard what sounded like one of her soft, knowing laughs. The ones I had seen Violet do. They brushed their hair behind their ears, and looked down at the ground or up at the sky when they did it. Swimming before the darkness behind my closed eyelids, I saw her laugh, brush her hair back, and look up at the sky, clear as an old movie.

  Forever… She repeated, It is a word that never moves too far from the forefront of your mind, Quinn Wesley.

  I tumbled away into darker blackness, into total sleep, and as I fell, the light that was her got further away, and the further it got, the more I saw that the light was not her; it was behind her, and she was a shadow, a shadow that was watching me fall, and waving slowly, waving me off into perfect, peaceful, quiet sleep.

  Our parting words are so cryptic, we Oliviers, Her voice echoed down softly, teasingly, following me into the abyss, reaching me before I was lost in it, ‘Forever is never far from your mind,’ ‘And then there were none…’ You will remember these words for the rest of your days, Quinn. Now sleep.