Blueprints of the Afterlife

SKINNER

Skinner pried open the can of fruit cocktail and stared into its murky juice. There were cherries in there, peeled grapes it looked like, mandarin orange slices, peach cubes. He brought the can to his lips and gulped the juice then shook the can to rattle some of the stuck fruit bits into his mouth. Not bothering to locate a utensil, he fished out individual pieces with his fingers. He considered crumpling the can and tossing it into the bushes but instead he smashed it flat with his boot and shoved it into an outer pocket of his backpack. Everywhere around him: forest. More specifically, the North Cascades. More specifically still, an overgrown, twenty-mile trail crazily wending through hemlock, devil’s club, and salmonberry toward his childhood home of Bramble Falls on the north tip of Lake Chelan.

He’d really screwed the pooch this time, hadn’t he? Leaving his family in Seattle, venturing out of phone range, crazy pissed off and confused, not returning to his daughter’s condo to talk it out in a more constructive manner, just racing north, disappearing into wilderness. He couldn’t remember getting here. Couldn’t even remember what he’d said after seeing Waitimu’s clone, though he imagined it hadn’t been pleasant. Partly he expected his wife and daughter to pursue him and, in the act of pursuit, prove their forgiveness, but he suspected they’d been so thrown by his outburst, so startled by his sudden flight, that they’d decided to remain in Seattle to see if he had the guts to return.

Every time Skinner’s mind returned to the awful reality of what Roon had done he slipped into a thought algorithm. First, visceral unease that a member of his family had birthed a clone. Then a more substantial wave of disgust that Roon had cloned Waitimu. At this point his thoughts came to a juncture. He could either relinquish the values of purebred humanism, for which he’d fought as a Christian American private contractor, and allow Roon’s decision to float on by. Or he could reassert his commitment to those values in response to their being challenged. Every time the algorithm played out, he’d chosen the latter. Then, after he had doubled down on the rightness of his convictions, the algorithm demanded he turn his back on Roon and Chiho. Here, twisty guilt crept into the process, which he had to keep in check by further asserting to himself that he was standing up for what he believed in. But just as soon as the guilt was taken care of, his thoughts turned into angry fists. Why had they so thoroughly failed him? The algorithm turned to doubt. Maybe he was the problem. Maybe his were the mistaken values. The algorithm concluded and he started again at the beginning, back at disgust.

Out here with birds and trees the mechanizations of his confused thoughts boiled on in exile. It always astounded him how thoroughly indifferent the grand, natural world was to the agonies of human emotional life. Up towered swaying pillars of alder, turning sunlight green through the veins of their leaves. Most of these trees had sprouted prior to the FUS and would outlive every person now living. A rodent of some sort scurried in the underbrush. In this place the frettings of a father over his daughter fell silent in the terrifying continuity of geological time. At twilight Skinner came to a clearing where he pitched his tent and made a small fire. From his backpack he retrieved a roll of foil, from which he ripped a rectangle. Onto this surface he cubed some potatoes and tossed on a few slices of cheese, sprinkled on some Tabasco, salt, and pepper. He wrapped the food securely and placed the foil packet directly on the embers. Half an hour later he opened the steaming packet and ate.

Next morning Skinner woke, doused the fire with water from a nearby creek, packed up, and moved on, cresting the ridge around noon. This was the tricky part that put his walking stick to good use. In places the trail narrowed to the width of two boots, riding the top of a crumbling, undulating spine. Lake Chelan stretched below like an enormous string bean. Skinner hiked along the ridge for a good two miles before the trail dipped toward the lake, steeply switching back and forth. He steadied himself by grabbing huckleberry branches along the path. On the third switchback he spotted the church steeple through the trees.

Soon the path leveled out and intersected with what used to be a paved road, now a zone of chunked-up asphalt overgrown with waist-high sedges. This was the main road, an isolated stretch going from one end of nowhere to the other in a town accessible only by boat. Bramble Falls seemed to have sprung fully formed from the mind of an omnipotent tourist, with its collection of artisans’ galleries and tackle shops, a magnet for pashmina-clad grandmothers and men wearing hip waders. Visitors used to come here in the summer to stay at the inn or the dozen B&Bs, to kayak and hike, to attend Buddhist retreats where no one was permitted to speak for days. Skinner had lived here with his dad, a retired fisherman and boat builder who’d escaped western Washington to spend the last few years of his life in the mountains. Decades later, walking through the ruins, Skinner wondered if he should remember more of these buildings and business signs. It was a documented side effect that indulging in too many enhanced memory trips chipped away at real memories, those ephemeral, less vivid, frozen moments so prone to distortion. Here was an ice-cream shop, identified with a dead neon sign in the shape of a dripping cone. The rusted skeletons of a few cars sat inert in the street. Trinket stores, the old grocery, a salon offering specials on facials and pedicures—all these places empty. Bramble Falls was a ghost town.

Skinner stood outside the two-story house considering the windows blinded by sheets of plywood, the yard with the tree where the tire swing still dangled from a plastic rope. Nearby a carcass of some sort, maybe a fox, hosted a buzzing convention of flies. Skinner walked to the door and opened it. Easy as that. Inside smelled of mildew and rot and animals. Light seeped through various holes and cracks. Objects that used to be pieces of furniture collected shadows in the living room. From where he stood he could see into the kitchen, where a cookie tin lay on the floor. The floorboards seemed to cry out in pain as he crossed to the stairs. He tested each stair with his walking stick before putting his weight on it, holding on to the railing as he climbed to the second story. Up here sunlight and wind fought their way through a window that hadn’t been covered. Skinner shook as he walked down the hall to his old bedroom. The door was ajar. He nudged it open. The room hadn’t changed. The football-print bedspread was as vibrantly green as he’d left it, books and sports trophies almost too neatly arranged on shelves. A toy fire truck sat in the spirals of a rag rug. This was all wrong. There should have been cobwebs, dust, peeling wallpaper. The place looked preserved.

A naked child with no eyes exploded from the closet.

Skinner reeled back. The boy jumped on the bed, spitting out sounds: “Bzzzzz! Beeezzzz! Bzzzzzst!”

Skinner ran. Down the stairs, out the front door, across the yard, gasping, back to the main road. He fell to the street, clawing at his face as he violently wept. Gradually he composed himself. The sound of shoes on gravel, thirty yards away. In a second Skinner was on his feet, Coca-Cola unholstered. A middle-aged man and woman jumped and exclaimed. Both wore multipocketed khaki vests and shorts, hiking boots, sun hats, backpacks laden with gear. The man bore a voluminous beard streaked with gray. The woman was considerably shorter, her face beaky and startled.

“Identify yourselves,” Skinner said.

“For God’s sake, wise elder, put that firearm down!” the man said.

“I said identify yourselves.”

“We’re doctors, Sal and Rhonda Vacunin.”

“What are you doing here?”

“We might ask you the same question!” Rhonda exclaimed.

“We’re here conducting academic research for a book,” Sal said. “Now please point that pistol elsewhere!”

Skinner returned the gun to its armpit holster. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t expect anyone else to be here.”

“We heard a commotion and had to satisfy our curiosity,” Sal said. “And now that we’ve given our reason for being here, what’s yours?”

“I used to live here.”

The professorial couple both rose up on their tiptoes with hands aflutter and mouths agape.

“Why, how unbelievably serendipitous!” Sal exclaimed as the couple rushed to grasp Skinner’s shoulders as if he were an old friend. “Rhonda, can you believe our fortune? How grand!”

“How grand indeed!” Rhonda laughed. “Oh, you must join us for supper. There are so many things we’d love