JOHN HENRY RIDDERBOS.
“Husband,” Seth automatically says, because how many Ridderboses could there be in the world? He moves to select the one next to John Henry, but he pauses. Yes, husband. Families would have entered here together, wouldn’t they? Husbands and wives. Parents and children.
Except Seth woke up alone, in his own home.
But here were two Ridderboses, next to each other in the same row.
“So what about the Wearings, then?” he says, scanning the rest of the read-out, wondering if there’s a way to –
There is. A box marked, simply, SEARCH. He presses it. A small keypad display appears, grouped in the normal keyboard arrangement. So probably not alien then, he thinks. He types in Wearing. He hesitates for a second over the word GO, but then presses it, too.
The graphical display of the coffins rapidly switches and turns, as if an overhead camera is zooming out over the vast rooms behind him before slowing down and closing in on a row, deep in some corner that he’d almost certainly never find.
First one coffin is highlighted, then another, and a list of names begins to emerge.
EDWARD ALEXANDER JAMES WEARING.
CANDACE ELIZABETH WEARING –
Seth doesn’t even wait for it to finish processing. He presses his father’s name.
And there he is. Younger, obviously so, his hair a completely different style and no streaks of gray. But his eyes have that slightly medicated look that Seth knows all too well. Seth presses his mother’s name, and her picture pops up next to his father’s. She’s younger, too, her mouth pursed in that familiar defensive tightness, leaving no doubt as to who she is.
As simple as that, there they are.
Seeing them is unexpectedly hard. Worse than hard, painful. Seth’s stomach actually starts to hurt. The unmistakable faces of his parents, younger but immovably them, staring back at him.
And somewhere in the room behind him, too.
He turns to look, but the graphical search had moved so fast he couldn’t follow where it went. They could be anywhere, in any part of this vast complex.
Sleeping.
But also not sleeping. Living their lives, lives that to them were completely real. He turns back to the pictures and wonders what they’re doing, right now, right this second, in the world of their house in Halfmarket.
Are you thinking about your son? he wonders.
The son who left without explaining or saying good-bye.
Their faces stare back at him from the screen, and he tries not to see accusation there.
Seth has to go. He knows it. It’s been too long. The Driver will be on its way, will probably be here any second.
He has to go.
But he keeps looking into the eyes of his mother and father.
Until he finally swallows away the pain in his stomach and taps their pictures lightly, collapsing them back into the grid of coffins. It’s time to leave. It’s past time to leave, but he has to see one more. He reaches over to the list of names to tap –
He stops.
Owen isn’t there.
The list of Wearing names is only two long. Edward and Candace, his father and mother.
Seth frowns. He opens the SEARCH box again and retypes his last name. It delivers the same results: Edward and Candace Wearing. He goes back to the SEARCH box once more and types in Owen’s full name.
NO MATCHES FOUND, the screen tells him.
“What?” Seth asks, his voice getting louder. “What?”
He tries again. And again.
But Owen isn’t here.
He doesn’t believe it, can’t believe it. He types in his own name, but of course, he isn’t here either, because he was in a lone coffin, separate from the main group, out there in his house, on his own. Maybe there hadn’t been space. Maybe most of the coffins had been filled by the time his family came to join and other plans had to be made.
Who knows? And frankly, who cares?
Because Owen isn’t here. Owen is out there somewhere. Out there in this burnt-up, empty world. In his own coffin. All by himself.
Alone, like Seth was.
“How could you?” he asks. “How could you do that?”
His anger rises. He knows it’s illogical. That wherever Owen might be physically, he was with his parents, in every way that mattered in the online world. He’d seen it himself for the past eight years.
But still. What if he woke up? What if he was like Tomasz and woke up alone in a strange place, with no one to protect him?
The resolution comes hard and fast, like it’s the thing he now knows he must do.
“I’ll find you,” he says, a new sense of purpose flooding him, a welcome one. “Wherever you are, I’ll goddamn well find you.” He reaches to stab his parents’ coffins again, thinking there might be further information, some record of where their youngest son is being kept –
“Ow!”
A static charge shocks him where he touches the screen. It’s not much, the pain is negligible –
But the screen has changed. The coffins are all gone, replaced by a few words.
DAMAGED NODE DETECTED, the screen now reads.
SCAN IN PROGRESS, appears below that.
There is a shift in the lights, as one end of the room is suddenly lit by a strange greenish glow. Far too fast to outrun, it moves along the rows of coffins, until it washes over Seth.
And stops on him.
“Oh, crap,” he says.
RESTORATION POSSIBLE, the screen says.
RE-ACTUALIZATION BEGUN.
“Shit!” Seth says, not sure what Re-actualization means but certain it can’t be anything good. He’s already turning back toward the short corridor to the stairs, already beginning to run –
When a blinding, debilitating pain shoots through his skull –
Right from the spot on the back of his neck where Albert Flynn’s lights were blinking, right from where Seth’s own “damaged node” must be –
And everything disappears in a flash of light.
49
“There’s always beauty,” said Gudmund. “If you know where to look.”
Seth laughed. “Gayest thing you’ve ever said, mate.”
“‘Mate,’” Gudmund laughed back. “Quit pretending to be English.”
“I am English.”
“Only when it’s convenient.”
Gudmund turned back to the ocean. They were up on a cliff that plunged down thirty or forty feet to the rocky waves below. It was the end of one of those noticeably shorter days that said that summer was winding down and the start of the school year was near.
But not yet.
“I mean, just look at that,” Gudmund said.