“If that was my fault, then I’m sorry, but I’m getting a little tired of –”
“I need a smoke,” Regine says.
“No!” Tomasz says. “You will die! Your lungs will be as dark as your skin! Your brain will grow out of your eyes in tumors!”
“Well, that’ll be something to see,” she says, and heads back to the front of the store.
Through the doors, they can still hear the engine cutting across the silence of the neighborhood, but it’s comfortably distant sounding and nothing’s hovering around the entrance waiting to grab them.
“As long as we’re not by the prison,” Regine says, going to the cigarette counter, “I’m guessing it doesn’t care as much.”
“What’s so special about the prison?” Seth says. “And what do you mean about me waking up?”
“Hold on,” Regine says from behind the cigarette counter. Most everything looks like it’s been torn to bits by rats, but after some scavenging, she finds a nearly whole pack of Silk Cuts. She rips it open like it’s the first Christmas present she’s ever received and taps out a cigarette.
“Regine,” Tomasz says, disappointed.
“You have no idea,” Regine says. “I mean, seriously, you don’t even have the first clue.”
She uses the lighter for its original purpose, the end of the cigarette sparking up in the gloom. She takes a deep, deep breath, holding the smoke in, and they can see her close her eyes tight against it, tears coming down first one cheek, then the other.
“Oh, Jesus,” she whispers. “Oh, sweet holy shit.”
Tomasz looks seriously at Seth. “It will kill her.”
“I thought you said we were already dead,” Seth says.
“No,” Regine says. “Not dead. Tommy’s wrong there.” She coughs and takes another drag, leaning one hand on the counter in what seems like nearly debilitating relief. “What a stupid day.”
“Regine,” Seth says impatiently.
“All right,” she says. “All right.” She takes another drag. “I’m going to tell him, Tommy. You okay with that?”
Tomasz drags one foot across the floor, drawing a line in the dust. “He will be shocked,” he says. “He will not want to know.” Tomasz looks up at him seriously. “I did not believe it. I still do not very much.”
Seth swallows. “I’ll take that risk.”
“Okay, then,” Regine says, taking one more drag, then stubbing the butt out on the counter, pulling out another to light up. She looks at Seth, holds out the pack, offering him one.
Seth absentmindedly gestures at the running shorts and running shirt and running shoes he’s still somehow wearing. “Runner,” he says. “We can do pretty much anything except smoke.”
Regine nods. And then she begins.
“The world,” she says, “is over.”
38
“Over?” Seth asks. “What do you mean, over?”
Regine sighs, the smoke curling out of her. “We think it’s over because we wanted it to be over.”
“We?”
“Everyone. All of us.”
Seth starts to ask more, but she stops him. “Did you used to go online? Before you woke up here?”
He gives her a confused look. “Of course, I did. What kind of question is that? You couldn’t get through life without your phone or your pad.”
“And that’s true everywhere, it seems,” Regine nods. “Even Poland.”
“I was not in Poland,” Tomasz says, irate. “How many times I have to say? Mother came over for work. And Poland is online quite fine, thank you very much. Very advanced country. I am tired of you always –”
“Anyway,” Regine says. “We think that sometime, eight or ten years ago, if you go by the dates on the stuff you find here, everyone went online.” She blows out another long line of smoke. “Permanently.”
Seth furrows his forehead. “What do you mean, permanently?”
“Oh, I know!” Tomasz says. “It means a thing like choosing to do it forever and forever.”
“I know what the word means –” Seth says.
“Everyone left the real world behind,” Regine says, “and moved to one that was entirely online. Some completely immersive version that didn’t look like being online at all, so much like real life you wouldn’t know the difference.”
But Seth is already shaking his head. “No, that’s insane. That kind of crap only happens in movies. You’d always be able to tell the difference. Real life is real life. You wouldn’t just forget about it.”
“Ah!” Tomasz says. “She has theory about this, too. She thinks we made ourselves forget. That way we worry less and we don’t miss it.”
Seth frowns at him. “You said you didn’t believe her. You said this was hell.”
Tomasz shrugs. “It is. But hell you make for yourself is still hell, maybe.”
“And you expect me to believe this?”
“I don’t care what you believe,” Regine says. “You asked for the truth, and this is it, the best that makes sense. We stuck ourselves in those coffins –”
Seth starts. “You guys woke up in them, too?”
“Oh, yes,” Regine says. “They’re not coffins, though, really. All those tubes, all that metallic tape stuff. It’s to keep us alive, isn’t it? Keep us fed, take our waste away, keep our muscles from dying, all while our minds think we’re somewhere else.”
“I couldn’t even see when I got out of the coffin,” Seth says. “In fact, I didn’t even know there was a coffin until I went back upstairs a couple days later.”
“Upstairs?”
“It was in the attic. In my old bedroom.”
Regine nods, as if this confirms something. “I woke up in my sitting room,” she says. “As confused as you were. Didn’t even move from where I fell for at least a day or two.”
Seth looks down at Tomasz, but Tomasz doesn’t offer his own story, just drags his toe along the floor once more. “Rain is coming,” he says.
They look out. Clouds are indeed rolling in fast from a distant horizon. Another weirdly tropical storm on the way.
“It is quiet, too,” Tomasz says.
Seth listens. The sound of the engine has gone while they were talking. There’s only the wind, blowing in the rain clouds that will at least finish any fire. Another convenient thing, he thinks.