“It is not over,” Tomasz says. “The world is healing itself. There are deers. There is us.”
“The world is half a burnt-out neighborhood and another one covered in mud,” Regine says. “No, what’ll happen is Seth’ll get back there, everyone will be so happy he isn’t dead, and he’ll have all his real friends back, his real family, and he’ll just –”
She stops dead, frowning ferociously.
“I’ll just what?” Seth asks. “Forget about you? Is that what you think?”
“Why wouldn’t you? Why wouldn’t anyone?”
“Because, you idiot,” he says, finally snapping back. “The reason I killed myself was because I was certain there wasn’t anything more. That there was never going to be more. That I was alone and unhappy forever.”
“Yes, yes,” Regine says, acting grandly bored, “and now you’ve learned your valuable lesson about how people aren’t spending all their time just thinking about poor old Seth and all his terrible, terrible problems.”
“No,” Seth says, firmly, “what I’ve learned is that there actually is more. There’s you guys. You guys are my more.”
“Oh, now, see,” Tomasz says to Regine. “This is very nice thing for him to say.”
“Saying it is all well and good,” Regine persists, “but what if you go back and die? Are we supposed to give you a nice funeral because you like us?”
“Look, I know it’s a risk –”
“A risk with your life.”
“A risk worth taking. Look, I want both. I want them and I want you. Now that I know there’s more? I want to have more. If there really is more to life, I want to live all of it. And why shouldn’t all of us? Don’t we deserve that?”
There’s a long silence while Tomasz and Regine exchange looks.
“It may not even work,” Seth says again.
“But it may,” Regine says.
Seth sighs. “Make up your mind, Regine –”
“It would change everything, wouldn’t it?”
“And what’s wrong with that? Don’t you think things need changing? Don’t you think people need to wake up? Literally? If we could figure out a way to get in and out, maybe we could figure out ways to change other things, too.” He looks at her. “Make it better.”
But Regine looks skeptical. “Well, you’ve gone all heroic.”
“You’re the one who’s been trying to get me to face reality. You yell at me for thinking this is all in my head –”
“Oh, you’re finally believing this is real, are you?”
Seth makes a scale-like motion with his hands. “Sixty-forty.”
“What if I told you it was all in your head?” Regine says. “And that we were just making it easier for you to accept your death?”
“Then I’d keep my eyes open, remember who I was, and go in swinging.”
Regine is surprised into silence by hearing her words said back to her.
“There’s more than this,” Seth says. “So let’s go find it.”
“Well,” Tomasz says, after a moment, “I do not know about either of you, but I am feeling very stirred up!”
76
They decide to make a first try that afternoon. Seth is eager to go, but even he can see the sense of a nap after the morning they’ve had.
None of them can sleep, though.
“Forget it,” Regine finally says, rousting Tomasz and Seth from their bedroom. “Let’s just go and you can fail and then we can all get some proper rest.”
“That’s the spirit,” Seth says.
They start gathering things to take to Seth’s house, which seems the most likely place to try first. They’ll see if his coffin is less broken than Regine’s and go from there.
“I like what you say about changing the program, maybe,” Tomasz says. “I could learn to do that.”
“It’s pretty sophisticated,” Seth says.
“And I am very clever. I am sure I could figure it and shazam! Tomasz saves the world again.”
“You could probably save the world just by combing that hair,” Regine says, handing Tomasz a bottle of water. “It was shaved when I found you. How can it be such a briar patch?”
“Male hormones,” he says, knowledgably. “I am approaching my growth spurt. I will shoot up even taller than the two of you.”
“Yeah,” Regine says. “You just keep telling yourself that.”
Having lost or broken all of their bicycles, they set out walking.
“Just think,” Tomasz says to Seth as they go. “This may be the last time you see this house. If you die.”
“That’s kind of the point of the two of you coming along,” Seth says, “to try and make sure that doesn’t happen.”
“Oh, we will do our best, Mr. Seth, but it may not be good enough.”
“What happened to Tomasz saves the world again?”
Tomasz shrugs. “I am bound to muck it up one of these times.”
“Do you have a plan for when you get back there?” Regine says, crossing the main road. “What if you open your eyes and you have a broken shoulder and can’t save yourself?”
“You started there at the top of the stairs,” Seth says, “a little bit before the malfunction. Maybe I’ll start before I get too cold to swim. Maybe I’ll even start on the beach and can just not go in.”
“It may not be as easy as you think. I was overwhelmed by it. It’s hard to change something you’ve already done.”
“Would you really like me not to do this at all? Not even try?”
She pulls her mouth tight. “I just want to make sure you’ve considered everything.”
Seth grins. “I really came late to the guardian angel sale, didn’t I? To get the pair of you.”
“I think we have done just fine, thank you very much,” Tomasz says.
“I don’t believe in guardian angels,” Regine says seriously. “Just people who are there for you and people who aren’t.”
“Yes,” Tomasz says. “Yes, I agree with this.”
“Just people,” Seth says, finding he agrees, too.
They walk down the empty High Street where Seth first really saw this world, past the supermarket where he got so much needed food and the outdoor store where he got so much needed equipment.