“Oh no,” James said to himself, the bottom of the world falling away and splashing to the pavement below alongside so many souls.
When they reached the Vancouver Public Library, James disengaged his magnetic field, and the rest of the team followed suit. Their eyes were wide as they absorbed their surroundings, aghast at the implacable stillness. Vancouver was a massive mausoleum for the dreams and potential of millions of its former inhabitants.
“They’re all gone,” Thel uttered. “Can this possibly have happened everywhere?”
“We need to find out,” Old-timer replied as he looked to James for instructions.
James turned and let himself float down to the main entrance of the old library, the others following as if in a shared trance. The library was one of the oldest buildings in the city and had been protected as a museum and an important historical artifact as other buildings were razed around it to make way for the new world. It wasn’t practical like other modern-day buildings; it had been built to look like a coliseum that had spun itself until the gravitational forces caused its outer shell to peel away from the building. It gave the library the look of a spiral, like pictures of the Milky Way, with the walls reaching out like so many teeming solar systems—or, perhaps more appropriate to the current situation, like the spiraling water in a toilet after it had been flushed, humanity circling the bowl.
Modern buildings would never waste their time on architectural wonderment—things like walls that went nowhere; they were functional and practical. Usually they were tubular in shape—some cylindrical while others were squat like bees’ nests. The outsides of the buildings were dotted with large circular entrance ways, each protected with its own magnetic field that would function as both a door and a window. The rooms in the buildings, whether apartments or offices, were always accessible through the exterior of the building or through the hollowed-out core in the interior of the building. There were no stairwells, no hallways, no elevators.
The inside of the library was archaic. After walking through a massive lobby that stretched several stories into the sky, James led them into the main body of the building. The floors were connected to one another by escalator systems that had been shut down for decades and were rarely turned on now, so as to save wear and tear. To get from one floor to another, one had to ascend the frozen escalators like stairs, a task that required a willingness to indulge in embarrassing atavistic behavior. James began to climb the stairs first, followed closely by Old-timer. The others stopped for a moment at the foot of the stairs and watched the strange movements of the two men’s bodies.
“They look so…odd—like monkeys,” Djanet observed.
“Everyone used to go between floors in buildings like that,” Rich replied. “Can you imagine that? Being trapped on the ground, having to make a fool of yourself to get from one floor to another?” He shook his head at the demeaning thought.
“Well,” Thel replied, “there doesn’t appear to be anyone around to laugh at us.” She shrugged and began climbing the stairs and rushed to catch up to James and Old-timer.
Djanet and Rich hesitantly began climbing as well, but after a few awkward moments, both lifted off the stairs and began to carefully fly, skimming along the surface of the metallic stairs to the second floor.
When they reached their companions, James was smashing the glass display cases that contained several maps and atlases. He flipped through them furiously, making sure they contained the needed information. Each atlas that passed the test was handed off to one of the team members. “These old atlases will help guide you home.”
“How?” Rich asked, taking an atlas from James. “I don’t get how to use these old things.”
“You’ll have to get into space, high enough above the stratosphere so you can generally see where you’re going. Take your best guess and then head toward your home. When you get close to the surface you’ll be blind, unable to navigate because you’re too close. That’s when you’ll need these. They contain street and road names, and many of these old roads still exist. You can use them to guide you the rest of the way. If you find people, do everything you can to disconnect them from the Net, even if it means giving them a mild electric shock. When you’re done, rendezvous back at my house and report to the rest of us. If you find no one, the order is the same, rendezvous and report. As horrible as this is, none of us has time to mourn. Is that clear for everyone?”
“What are
“I’m going to New York with Thel to check on her sister,” he replied. “Go as quickly as you can.”
And with that, each member of the team made his or her way out of the building and into the air. James shared a last look with Old-timer before the centenarian activated his magnetic field and darted upward like a flash of lightning striking back at God.
Thel and James darted upward too, up into space, up above the world that had cradled humanity from the beginning to what appeared to be the end.
When Old-timer and James shared that last look, Old-timer’s eyes had said what James was thinking. “
8
James followed Thel’s lead as they streaked out of the atmosphere and eastward, above the continent. There was no way to communicate other than with hand signals, but Thel’s extreme speed was making it impossible for James to stay within range of her. For most of the trip, Thel was just a little green star, at times more than a kilometer away from him. He understood her mindset: She had to get home. But with each passing moment, James was becoming more and more sure that there would be no one to greet her when they arrived.
Thel slowed for a moment over the eastern seaboard of North America before plunging downward at several times the speed of sound. Most of the east coast was completely clear of cloud cover, and it made it easy for her to eyeball her home. James lost sight of her as she darted downward, but he figured it would be easy enough to pick her up again, as he guessed for himself where the city was. Nevertheless, he estimated a little too far to the south and found himself traveling up the coastline. Before long, he reached Manhattan and was slowing down as he flew over the Brooklyn Bridge.
He’d visited Thel in New York countless times, including that fateful night last New Year’s Eve when he’d started to have the wrong thoughts—the ones that were recorded by the nans and reported to his wife—reported to everyone. The message e-mailed to everyone on his contact list, neighbors, co-workers, relatives, was simple:
The thoughts were reported because he was married. The nans didn’t report regular sexual attraction to members of the opposite sex, even if those feelings occurred outside of a marriage. They only reported the strong feelings—the ones strong enough that they might cause the subject to act. People were reported all the time. Most people were reported several times in their marriages, but it was the first time that it had happened to James—and James was supposed to be special.
Despite the number of times James had been to New York, he’d never visited the Brooklyn Bridge. Like the Vancouver Public Library, it was a relic, even more so in fact, but unlike the library and very much like modern architecture, it had been practical in its time. It wasn’t very functional anymore; no one had need for a bridge now so it was preserved as a keepsake of an earlier time—an odd time when the bridge was a lifeline to the rest of the world. Crude petrol-fueled vehicles had once rolled over the bridge on crude rubber tires; nowadays, the only people who visited it were those curious about a bygone era. One could walk over the bridge and pretend they were like those sad creatures who were locked to the ground, slaves to gravity like most mammalians.
A closer inspection of the bridge revealed more red stains.
New York, the second biggest hive in North America, was deserted. Just like Vancouver, there was no one flying above the massive skyscrapers and famous skyline—no one but James.
James darted toward Thel’s apartment. She lived in a skyscraper near the Empire State Building. Her building dwarfed the old relic and stretched over 300 stories into the sky, but even it was nowhere near the tallest building in the city. Thel lived on the 193rd floor, but with no automatic guiding system, it was extremely difficult to find her apartment among the thousands in the building. He guessed the general proximity and disengaged his magnetic field. “Thel!” he called out.
