A Beginning at the End

by Laramie Wyatt Sanchez Graber

Part 1 appears in this issue.

conclusion

It was bright above, so bright it stung. There were vague gray and lancing streaks of white and yellow and orange and everything else was just blurs. Lila had thought her eyes would adjust quickly. Instead she stumbled blindly, trying to find cover so she wouldn’t be seen. She heard Ben behind, doing the same. Lila tripped over something, fell to the ground. She scrambled up, scraping her knee. It couldn’t end like this. That would be so stupid!

“Wait,” Ben said. “Do you hear anything?”

“I... No.”

“I don’t think there’s anyone here.”

Lila’s adrenaline wouldn’t allow her to calm just yet. “Maybe people are silent up here.”

“Remember what I said? It got quieter after the quakes.”

“Yep. Yep...” Lila sank to what she guessed was concrete.

Ben sat down against her back.

Gradually, so annoyingly gradually, the world began to become visible. Squinting, Lila identified parts as they became visible, matching them to books she’d read. They were indeed sitting on concrete, a large dumpster behind them. A crack split through its center, letting in more light through the partially caved-in roof.

The surroundings were similar, more concrete, more dumpsters and large trucks with cabins at the front and large open containers at their backs. Lila tried seeing further into the distance, but the sun was too bright. Her fear was quickly fading to disappointment. This was boring.

“I can see again,” Ben said. “Or mostly at least.”

“Yep.”

“Do you think everyone is just gone?”

“I don’t know. Maybe.”

“Should we be sad?”

“Oh.” Lila hadn’t really even thought of the people except as obstacles. She’d been all about finding things. But now she remembered how Ben talked about the books. “You wanted to meet someone, didn’t you?”

“I mean, I know they’re probably bad, but yeah. They’re very interesting in the books.”

Lila gestured all around. “Maybe they’re just not in this...” Finally, she could see what was in the distance: skyscraper after skyscraper.

“Lila?”

Fear warred with excitement. But if they were going to do this, then fear had no place. “First one to find a water bottle wins!” Lila took off across the expanse of concrete.

Being in the city was strange. Lila, even acknowledging her naivete, had expected it to be like searching through the Great Trash Heap. Her sense of discovery was gone, replaced with an uneasy awe. Searching through trash, Lila could decide what an object was going to become, what it could mean. In the city, she could only guess at what everything was for, wondering how it was possible that the people that had made all this were simply gone.

For, there was no life in the city either, save for a few scuttling roaches. Ben had been partially correct. She had expected to see some of the painting come to life. Something alive, something for her that had not yet been fully claimed. But there was only endless concrete and glass and advertisements and automated robots.

Lila desperately wanted to know how the robots worked and how a people that had designed them could not be around to explain to her how they worked. Cameras followed her every move. Windows were washed, automated brush robots going up and down the glass skyscrapers.

Metal machines swept perfectly clean sidewalks. Some cleaners were broken, unmoving, but it was remarkable that any still functioned. The insect farming operation had to be tended to daily. Had the people above somehow left purposefully, leaving everything running for their return? It almost made more sense than anything else.

A picture of a woman beneath a “Beautiful You: Cosmetics and Body Enhancements” sign caught Lila’s eye. Her skin was eerily smooth and white like a porcelain pot Lila had once found. There were a few people so pale in her world, but that was due to lack of sunlight.

Lila ran her fingers along the ridges of her own brown skin, touched the beginnings of smile lines around her mouth, the splotches from acne. The woman was very skinny, her arms skin stretched over bone. Could she be sick? Her cheeks were flushed unnaturally red as if fevered. Was this the plague?

“I couldn’t find one!!” Ben called, running up. “But I don’t think we’re gonna be able to.”

“Ben, does this woman look okay to you?”

Ben studied the picture, frowned. “No, she looks sick.”

“That’s what I thought. Could this be a doctor’s office?”

“The name doesn’t seem right. And why would a doctor’s office display a sick person?”

Lila forced out what seemed logical but was hard to say. “So she’s supposed to be beautiful?”

“The sign says ‘beautiful you’.”

“Those arms though...”

“You wanna see something really troubling? Look up.”

Ben’s forced levity made Lila look up immediately. She blinked in the brightness, eyes watering, but forced herself to take a good look. The gray-pocked orb in the sky, the moon, had a massive chunk taken out of it.

“It’s not supposed to be like that, is it?” Ben asked.

“No.” Lila focused closely on a cleaning robot.

“That’s what I thought. I mean, originally I thought it looked really cool, but then I remembered—”

“Something very bad happened,” she grunted.

“What?”

“In so many of their books about the future, they damage the moon. You’d think they wouldn’t let it happen in real life.”

“I guess knowing you can create that much destruction is a lot different than stopping it.”

Lila took a deep breath, squared her shoulders. “You know what we have to do now, right?”

“See how widespread the damage is?”

“Yep.” Lila pointed to where buildings rose atop a hill. “We’ll have a good view from up there.”

“And I know just how to get there.” Ben walked towards a car.

“Uh, we have no idea how those work.”

“We can figure it out.”

“I really think we can’t.”

Ben put his hand on a car door. It slid open and a woman’s voice said, “Welcome. Thank you for choosing Ride.” Ben jumped back.

Lila did her best to pretend she hadn’t done the same. “Don’t worry, it’s just a helpful AI like in science fiction. Or the Alexa.” On special occasions the adults would bring out the tubular speaker to delight and shock the children. Famously, Ben had squealed very loudly.

“In that case, after you.” Ben gestured Lila forward grandly and stepped farther away from the car.

Lila took a deep breath and scooted to the far side of the car. Nothing happened. Lila let the breath out. “See?”

Ben attempted an eye roll and slid into the car. The door slid closed. Ben and Lila exchanged a furtive glance. For all they knew, the car was carefully studying them.

“Where would you like to go?” the car asked.

“Straight to the top of the hill,” Lila said.

“Would 250 Apple Avenue be a suitable address?”

“Uh... yes.”

Silently, the car peeled away from the curb. Ben and Lila sat in silence, watching the buildings go past. They shared amused glances when the car stopped at red lights. They looked for any sign of damage, of what had befallen the people above. The only sign of anything wrong was a smashed windshield on a car.

“What we’re doing, it’s pretty amazing, right?” Ben said.

“Yep.”

“Like it’s historic for our people.”

“Yep.”

“Shouldn’t it feel more momentous? It did originally, but now, even though we’re in a car driven by a robot, it just, it doesn’t feel particularly momentous. Something was supposed to happen.”

Lila gave a smile. “We haven’t made our discovery yet.”

At the top of the hill, the car parked along the curb. “Thank you for choosing Ride. How would you like to pay?”

Ben and Lila stared blankly for a moment.

“Oh, we don’t have...” Lila said. “We can get something for a trade though.”

“You cannot leave until you pay. What payment option would you prefer, chip, card, or DNA?”

Ben tried the door. It was locked. “This is not like Alexa!”

“You can’t keep us like this!” Lila panicked while attempting to stall. “We’re people.”

“Be assured it is perfectly legal. I can recite the law if you wish.”

Ben was now hitting the door.

“Please remain calm.”

Ben kicked the door.

“What happens to us?” Lila asked.

“We will remain here until the proper authorities arrive.”

“Which could literally be forever!” Ben’s attempts at the door were becoming flails.

“Please remain calm.”

Lila closed her eyes. She could not be defeated by a car. She just had to think like the people above... “Okay, okay... We don’t have our payment method. But we can pay. We can pay more.”

“This is acceptable, but it will double the cost.”

“Yes...” Lila let out a deep breath.

“You have two days to pay at which point the police will be dispatched to find you and you will have to pay 1,000 dollars. Also, you must consent to a full body scan.”

“Yes, yes...”

The doors slid open.

Lila and Ben scrambled out.

“Again, thank you for choosing Ride. Could you please rate your experience...?”

Lila and Ben raced out of earshot and only stopped when they were both doubled over panting.

“The zombie plague was built into the city,” Lila said. She now fully understood the importance of the cameras, trying to find any place that wasn’t covered by them.

Ben followed her gaze and nodded grimly. “Okay, let’s complete our mission and then get out of here.”

Lila nodded and stared in frustration at the glass and concrete blocking any sort of view. “We’ll have to go into one of these buildings.”

“Just avoid any robot voices.” They both knew that wouldn’t guarantee safety. However, neither wanted their adventure to end with fear and nothing more.

They tried door after door. Most were locked. Some set off alarms and threatened that the police were coming. Finally, a door slid open.

It was an apartment building or a hotel. Lila couldn’t remember how to tell which. They chose the stairs rather than the elevator and took them all the way to the top. They tried doors and eventually found one that opened into the first true signs of messiness.

Some clothes were scattered on the floor. A photo had fallen on the floor and cracked. A pile of dishes could be glimpsed through the doorway into the kitchen. People had been forced to leave in a hurry. Lila’s eyes settled on a photograph. Two men and a boy and a girl, all smiling.

Lila went to say something to Ben, about how these people at least didn’t look like zombies, and then noticed how still he had gone by the window. She went over and joined in his stillness.

Beyond the city to the north was nothing, extending as far as the eye could see. Lila searched for more apt descriptors, because surely something that meant so much death should be encapsulated in paragraph upon paragraph, equal to what it had taken. But there was only flat, blackened earth and nothing more.

Lila wasn’t sure how long she’d stared, desperately trying to recreate what had been lost and becoming lost herself, when she said, “I think we should be sad.”

“What?” Ben’s face was scarily blank. He had wanted to befriend the people up here. For him, the family photograph would be more than a tragic clue. It would be lost laughter and hugs and tears and companionable silences and everything that made a family.

“You asked earlier about—”

“Oh... But they just can’t all be gone, can they?”

Lila didn’t know. She suspected there were clues to uncover. But... “If they are gone, it might not be bad for us.”

“Because of what they did to themselves.”

“Yep.”

“I think that makes it even sadder.” Ben went back to staring at the nothing.

Lila took a deep breath. It was time to remind Ben that there were still people he could help. And at that task, nobody would try harder than Ben. She took Ben’s hand and he wrenched his eyes away from the nothing to the ridges of her face. She smiled for Ben, small but determined. “We have to get to work.”

Ben frowned.

“With the people above gone, our electricity, our water could start to fail. We have to make sure that doesn’t happen. We have to explore the rest of the world now.”

“No one will like that.”

“My mom will faint. Then, when we make it just like the painting, she’ll faint again.” Lila imagined repurposed city machines working on the nothing, transforming it into buildings with greenery and streams.

Ben finally managed to meet Lila’s smile. “You’re actually enjoying this, aren’t you?”

“Well, partly. I redefine things through discovery.” Lila gestured at the city, at the nothing. “With all this, how could I not? And how could you resist helping...” Lila wiggled her eyebrows.

Ben attempted to roll his eyes but squeezed her hand.

“Together?” Lila asked.

“Together,” Ben said and pulled her into a hug.

The two walked back, not racing this time, but side by side. Twilight came and the sky exploded into sunset before fading to the inexorable night. Lights came on in the city and the moon glowed. It may have been missing a part of itself, but it guided the two just as it had guided explorers throughout the centuries.