“Object 54? You waited weeks to name it and all you could come up with is Object 54? That’s a terrible name. You know that you can name the asteroid after yourself because whoever discovers it gets to name it.”

“I have zero desire for the asteroid that could destroy all life on Earth to be named after me,” Kaori Sasaki said. She rubbed her temple with her left hand as she blew on her tasteless coffee to cool it. Her tenth cup in twenty-four hours.

Kaori shuddered. Coldness seized her.

Object 54, a fifteen-point-three-kilometer nickel and iron asteroid, is a planet-killer and on a trajectory to sterilize Earth in three days.

Impact will vaporize parts of the Pacific, create tsunamis hundreds of meters high, ignite firestorms across continents, trigger mega-earthquakes, and bury any survivors beneath lethal ash and deadly cold temperatures.

Minako Sawada, PhD, senior astronomer at Jododaira Astronomical Observatory in Fukushima, Japan, and Kaori’s boss, asserted, “Except that it’s not going to annihilate Earth, Kaori, because you built the machine that will save the planet.”

“I built a machine that might save the world. We won’t know for another—” She twisted her wrist and glanced at her Seiko—“twelve more minutes when we fire up the deflector.”

“When you fire up the beam that you invented it will distort local space geometry and deflect Object 54 away from the Earth into a safe path toward the Sun.”

“I’ll press the button, but despite what the theory suggests about gravitational displacement, we won’t know if it works with such a massive object until that moment. And if it doesn’t work, that’s it. The end of life, the end of everything. We haven’t had time to test it at scale.”

“I have faith in your machine because I have faith in you, Kaori.”

“A lot of people don’t.”

“They don’t understand the equations of gravitational topology distortions and how your vector engine works as a deflector beam.”

“I’m not sure I fully do, either.”

They sat in the dark observatory dome room, sixteen hundred meters high. It was two-fifty-five in the morning. Even at this elevation, the sweet scent of apricot and jasmine kinmokusei flowers, which bloomed in October, filled the room.

“Do you smell that?” Kaori asked.

“I love kinmokusei. It’s my favorite flower. And thanks to your invention, we will smell kinmokusei next autumn, too.” Minako tapped her watch. “But I think it’s time to get to the control room.”

“The control room is only a twenty-second walk from here. We have time.”

Minako stood. “Let’s go, Kaori. Savior of the world you may be, but I’m still your boss, and I don’t want to leave anything to chance.”

Over one hundred souls crowded the observatory’s control room, a space usually occupied by no more than twelve. Among the crowd were Reiko Higuchi, Japan’s prime minister, Harlan Cole, the president of the United States, their security teams, camera crews from NHK and CNN, a dozen pool reporters, and other astronomers, scientists, and engineers.

Kaori sat in the one remaining chair in front of a white panel with a square, red button under a plexiglass cover. A large digital clock with blue numerals on the wall in front counted down the remaining minutes.

Nobody spoke. The room was quiet, as if the world had already ended.

Nine minutes and thirteen seconds.

Some of the assembled closed their eyes; others mouthed prayers. The video camera operators silently panned the room back and forth, like a muted metronome.

Kaori took a moment and thought about everything in her life: from her first boyfriend, to her decision to choose Kyodai over Tokyo University, to a chance encounter with a physics professor at lunch one day during her junior year, who inspired her to take a class that gave her the idea for a vector engine that would percolate in her mind for a decade until she developed the invention. She thought that if she’d not been hungry that day, how different today might’ve been.

After what felt like a century, Kaori took a deep breath and turned her head to scan the room.

Prime Minister Higuchi nodded, raised her hand, and crossed her fingers.

Kaori lifted the clear cover atop the button.

When the countdown reached exactly zero, Kaori pressed the red button.

A click echoed.

The deflector, located a hundred meters from the observatory in the Azuma Mountain Range and connected to every power plant in Japan for maximum energy, fired a bright yellow beam into the night sky. The quarter-meter-wide beam bubbled as if filled with sparkling water. The deflector beam intercepted Object 54 two-point-five-six seconds later. It tracked and held its position for nine seconds, the amount of time Kaori calculated the vector engine would need to change the asteroid’s trajectory, and also the amount of time the deflector could fire before burning out.

Nearly everyone in Japan lost power as the country plunged into darkness.

New York, London, Paris, Seoul, Sydney, and dozens of other cities turned off their lights in solidarity with Japan, a global symbol of hope.

Kaori had also calculated that it would take approximately five minutes to determine if the deflector was successful or if the world was doomed.

Two seconds after the beam stopped, night flipped to daytime. Bright light streamed through the control room’s windows.

“What?” Minako said. “What happened?”

Kaori, Minako, and then the Prime Minister and President, their security teams, and everyone else ran outside.

A flock of crows crossed above the observatory from east to west, cawing and screeching as they flew. Two bears emerged from a nearby grove, apparently woken from sleep, confusion painting their faces.

Kaori tilted her head up and turned a full circle.

The radiant sun blazed midway between the horizon and the zenith.

The sun is larger, Kaori thought.

Another sun, a bigger, red ball, hovered on the opposite side of the sky.

Between them, a translucent yellow, green, and indigo planet with six silver and gold rings occupied about an eighth of the sky. A ribbon of stars like the Milky Way, as seen from the African plains, twinkled through that planet.

Iridescence infused the sky, a deeper, richer blue than Kaori had ever witnessed before, even in Antarctica.

The air chimed with invisible resonance.

Prime Minister Higuchi strode to Kaori. “What happened?” she asked. “Did we deflect the asteroid?”

Kaori looked up again, studying the sky, her mouth agape.

The Prime Minister stood for a minute with her arms folded across her chest and then tapped Kaori’s shoulder.

“Give me a moment, Prime Minister.” Kaori paced in a tight, slow circle, her head tilted toward the sky. After a minute, she said, “Oh my god. The deflector didn’t change the asteroid’s trajectory. It pushed our planet to another solar system, maybe even another galaxy. It will take time to figure out where we are, if we even can.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means we’re forever safe from Object 54. This is the same Earth, only in a different part of the universe.” Kaori took in several shallow breaths in quick succession. Her face paled, her legs wobbled, and she fell to the ground.

The Prime Minister extended a hand and helped her to her feet. “Are you okay?”

“I’m okay,” Kaori answered. She looked at the sky again, gestured to the ringed planet above, and smiled. “I’m just overwhelmed by the view.”

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Now and then, I republish an older short story as a bonus story because new subscribers may not have seen it. The Liberation Gang is in addition to my regular bi-weekly short story, which will be published next Sunday, as usual.

“Wolf, Cat, Panda, Elephant, Bear, do you understand your roles today?” Bunny locked eyes with each member of her team.

Wolf was gray and brown with opal-colored eyes. Cat sported tabby stripes, snow-white paws, and a non-stop wagging tail. Panda wore sad eyes. Elephant was the tallest and thickest of the lot, with a trunk as long as its body. Bear gripped a honey jar, and Bunny’s pink ears stuck out like antennae on an old-style television.

The six plush animals huddled next to the zoo’s alpacas, a humming quartet of two white and two brown real animals, nuzzling each other. Shadows momentarily passed overhead, replaced by bright sunshine as the wind herded the clouds away.

“We know what to do,” Panda spoke for the gang.

The others nodded.

“Cat will distract the little girl who’s keeping Penguin captive by pretending to be lost. As soon as the kid starts looking for Cat’s owner, Penguin will run away.”

“Owner,” Wolf harrumphed. “We’re not owned!”

“Shh, Wolf,” Elephant said. “We know. But we’re on a mission, and you need to focus.”

“Sorry. I rile when somebody treats us like property.”

“You’re sure the five-year-old girl with the red hair and freckles who’s imprisoned Penguin will be at the zoo this afternoon?” Bunny asked Cat.

“Yes. I have a spy on the inside who gave me that information. She’s here every Saturday afternoon.”

“Who’s your informant?”

“Lego Lion at the gift shop. She’s never let me down,” Cat replied.

“Here’s how we’ll do it,” Bunny said. “We’ll hide behind the bench near the otters. Cat will approach stealthily, silently, surreptitiously, and softly. Then, Cat will lie on the ground next to her. The girl will worry about what she thinks is a lost stuffed animal—”

“We’re not a stuffed anything! I hate that word, stuffed,” Wolf interrupted.

“We will all wave to Penguin, so he knows where to go, with Elephant also swinging its trunk and sounding a horn,” Bunny said. “When Penguin sees us, he’ll know what to do, but Penguin’s likely to be disoriented when the girl drops him, so be prepared to assist. That means you, Wolf, because you’re the fastest. Are you ready to dash over and give Penguin a ride?”

“Yes.”

“Good. If something goes wrong, we’ll rendezvous at Sullivan’s Toys at eight o’clock.”

“What if Penguin doesn’t want to be separated from the girl?” Elephant asked, knowing that sometimes toy animals preferred to stay with their humans, even when offered the freedom to live with their own kind, an obstinate bond between child and plush. Last spring, everyone witnessed Giraffe kicking Duck while Duck tried to rescue Giraffe. Giraffe shouted, “Mary is my friend, you’re not!”

“If Penguin refuses to be liberated—” Bunny started to say.

“Shh, shh! I see them. Look! The little girl with Penguin is here,” Panda interrupted, pointing to the popcorn cart in front of the seal enclosure.

A thin man with white hair and a handlebar mustache wearing a striped, red and white shirt handed a popcorn bag to a little boy with a calico-colored plush fox tucked under his arm. A toy monkey sat on a chair behind the steel-framed glass popcorn popper, its hand on the popper’s handle. The machine played a carousel melody.

Louisa, the girl with Penguin, was next in line behind the boy.

“Are you ready?” Bunny asked Cat.

All the animals, except for Cat, hid behind a bench across the path near the otter tank.

Elephant wandered toward the otters, but Bear grabbed his leg. “Not now, Phelly. You can visit the otters after we free Penguin.”

“They’re so cute!” Elephant whined, but when Bear frowned, Elephant added, “Okay, later.”

Cat zig-zagged toward Louisa, flicking its tail back and forth. Cat bonked its head against the girl’s leg, purred, rolled onto its side, and lay motionless.

Louisa knelt and petted Cat. She smiled. “Kitty, did another child lose you?”

Louisa swiveled her head, observing children running aimlessly, children atop their parents’ shoulders, children in rapt conversation with lions, wolves, and meerkats, and children playing hopscotch, but none of the other kids were tearfully searching for a lost toy. Nobody dropped this toy animal.

Where did you come from?

She released Penguin and cradled Cat in her arms, stroking its head, back, and belly, scratching under its chin.

What shall I name you?

Penguin gasped—I’m free! When Penguin noticed his friends frantically waving from behind the bench, he waddled over as fast as he could, trailing snowflakes. Penguin’s heart beat in overdrive, and his lungs pumped furiously.

I’ll name you Zooy because I found you in the zoo.

“Hurry, hurry!” Bunny mouthed.

When he reached the safety of his friends, Penguin hugged them and said, “You rescued me!”

“It was Panda’s idea for Cat to distract the girl so you could escape,” Bunny said, offering Panda a high five. “The plan worked.”

They all high-fived each other.

“Wait!” Penguin said. He aimed an arm toward the girl holding Cat, who was serenading her new companion with The Owl and the Pussycat. “Who’s going to rescue Cat?”

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“He wants his mommy,” William snickered. “Look, he’s crying for his mommy. Boo hoo, Bobby boy.”

William pinned him against the maple tree, then knelt to retrieve a fistful of dirt. He showered Bobby’s head with soil and debris, the drizzle of earth covering Bobby’s bald head and spilling onto his face. “Look, more tears,” he said. “He’s a big crybaby.”

Bobby’s tears turned the soil on his cheeks into mud.

Even at thirty-three years old, Bobby’s chest heaved like he was still a child. His knees trembled and it took all his willpower not to wet his pants.

“Mommy!” His voice was hoarse and shrill. Bobby summoned the image of his mom from the photo of her he carried in his wallet. He scrunched his eyes closed for a few beats to focus on her as intensely as he could in his mind’s eye.

The three bullies lured Bobby to this grove in the woods, fifteen minutes from the paper mill where they all worked. Steve, who feigned friendship, claimed he discovered a big box of Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups and Nerds Clusters in the woods. No, he didn’t know how they got there, but it was like a Halloween haul; there was so much candy. Steve said that he and Bobby could split it.

Bobby had a reputation as a candy fiend, consuming a candy bar between every shift. Steve knew that Bobby would take the bait without any hesitation.

Nate and Steve, bullies-in-arms, flanked William. In unison, they jeered as they pumped their fists into the air: “Mommy, mommy, mommy.”

“I want my mommy.”

“He still wants his mommy,” Nate said.

“She’s dead, you know,” William added. “I think she died when Bobby was born and he never even met her, except maybe for a moment when he saw the fun part as he was exiting.” William curled his left hand’s fingers into a circle and slid the pointer finger of his right hand into the opening. “Probably the one and only time he’s been in one.”

Tears cascaded from Bobby’s eyes.

“Boo hoo, the big baby cries. Here, I’ll wipe those tears from your face.” William stooped to the forest floor and snatched a large, partially bug-eaten leaf. He stood a breath away from Bobby and roughly smudged his cheeks, not absorbing the tears, but spreading them all over Bobby’s face.

In middle and high school, they used toilet paper. It’s the same as always, only different.

Bobby wanted to get out of this town, run far, far away, but mommy said she needed to stay in Bangor.

Why?

Mommy has to, Bobby.

Tell me why. I hate this town. They bully me at school all the time, in between classes, after classes, even during classes when the teacher’s not looking. Make fun of me. Hurt me. They hurt me a lot, Mommy.

Once, they hurt me, too, son. Some people like us attract bullies.

Who hurt you? Bobby wanted to know.

Kids, later grown-ups. Other girls picked on me, played practical jokes that weren’t funny. Grown-ups at the dress factory. They bullied me every day, but one day I made them stop.

How did you make them stop?

I can’t explain that now. You’re too young and won’t understand.

Nate punched Bobby in his stomach.

Bobby winced, doubled over, and then fell to his knees.

“You didn’t need to sock him,” Steve said. “That’s not right because I wanted to hit him, ha ha ha.”

The sun dipped below the tree tops as if an unseen hand flipped a switch, shrouding Bobby and his three tormentors in a cloak of darkness while simultaneously extending their impossibly long shadows. As the sun continued its descent toward the horizon, Steve, Nate, and William taunted Bobby with more crude insults about his mother and his rotund body and his oily hair. Their shadows sharpened for a moment as if the sunlight had grown brighter, and then the shadows entirely disappeared.

The woods went silent. Birds, frogs, insects—it was as if they never existed. A total absence of wildlife in a place where animals roam with abandon. The silence persisted for a long minute, hollowing a void in nature.

William rubbed his arms, shivering. “Why is it so cold?”

A loud pop exploded from the adjacent woods.

They all jumped, except for Bobby.

William let loose a small shriek. “What was that?”

“Dunno. Maybe a chipmunk.”

Crack!

The trio swiveled their heads, attempting to locate the source. The crack like a big branch splitting apart came from somewhere behind the trees.

A gust of frostbitten air rushed from the grove, spiraling fallen leaves and whistling as it charged forward. The gust drove William, Steve, and Nate back several steps.

Steve tripped over a vine and then lifted himself.

Leaves crunched as something wended its way through the thicket.

“That’s too loud for chipmunks,” Nate said. “A wolf?”

“There are no wolves in Maine. But it could be a bear.”

“A bear—that’s not good.

William gasped.

A weathered and faded, navy-blue dress without a body inside drifted out from behind a tree. The bodiless sleeves and bottom fluttered and rustled as it advanced. A fetor of rot and decay choked the pine-scented air.

Nate, Steve, and William covered their mouths and noses.

As a body filled the dress, William’s jaw dropped, goosebumps popped up all over his neck and arms, and his scraggly blonde hair stood on end.

“Mom? Mom, how can you…?”

Nate pointed to the woman emerging from the grove. “No, that’s my mother, not yours.” He cocked his head to the left, squinted toward the woman, and sniffled. “But you died, Mom. You died when I was ten.”

“My mother is dead, too,” William added. “Mom, how is that you? I don’t understand.”

Steve shook his head. “No, no, no. I don’t know who you see, but that’s my mother, Florence. And she’s at home right now in a wheelchair, been in a wheelchair for five years. She can’t walk and she can’t be here. It’s not possible.” An eighty-year-old woman with gnarled hands, bowed legs, and skin gray and wrinkled like an elephant’s, hobbled toward Steve.

Steve pointed a shaking finger toward Bobby. “He did this. He poisoned us! Slipped us mushrooms somehow and we’re hallucinating, each seeing our own mother.” He slammed Bobby in the belly with his elbow; when he raised his arm to strike again, a pair of hands—his aged mother’s hands—tightened around his neck, squeezing hard and fast. He tried to wedge his fingers under those hands, but could not.

His eyes bulged. His lungs seized. He whimpered, “Mom, why?” and then collapsed lifelessly onto the forest floor.

“Mom, no!” Nate shouted to the woman who approached him with arms outstretched and locked in place. A tree thwarted his retreat. He tensed his legs against the tree, as if he could shove it backward, but both the tree and Nate remained rooted in place.

Mom hissed at Nate.

He eked out one more “Mom, no,” before his mother strangled him to death.

William willed his legs to move, to take him far away from this horror, but fear and confusion paralyzed him. All he could do was shake his head from side to side, mewling, “Mother.”

William’s mother clasped her hands on his head—a vise grip—twisted sharply to the left, and broke William’s neck with a loud snap.

Bobby’s heart quivered with the excitement of a little boy on Christmas morning. He raced to his mother. She was young and beautiful, with long black hair, a petite nose, and a face that hadn’t changed since Bobby saw her last, twenty years ago, before a car crash claimed her.

He wrapped his arms around her and hugged her tight as she rubbed his back and said, “Mother is here to protect you.” She dropped an arm to her side and grasped Bobby’s hand.

He registered the warm, sticky bullies’ blood and smiled again.

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Ten-year-old Cathy Sharpe screamed so loudly that if the window in their apartment hadn’t already been broken, it would certainly have shattered anew.

Her father ran from the living room to the kitchen, sweat pouring from his face, took his daughter’s hand, and asked, “What happened, baby?”

Cathy’s mom, Mali, dashed into the kitchen a second later.

“I swallowed the watermelon seed! A watermelon is going to grow inside my belly now.”

Bob Sharpe smiled—a rare occurrence these days—and said, “That won’t happen.” He released her hand. Even after only a few seconds, it was too hot to hold hands.

They sat on wobbly steel chairs at their wooden kitchen table. Every so often, paint flakes fell from the ceiling and walls onto the floor.

Cathy glared at her plate, wanting to push it away in case more seeds remained and she swallowed one of those, too, but also wanting to devour every last bit of the fruit.

“It will! At school, Jimmy Kulken said that if you swallow a watermelon seed, it becomes a watermelon.” Cathy panted, and her little heart raced wildly inside her chest.

“Jimmy Kulken doesn’t know anything. He made that up,” Cathy’s mother, said. “I’m certain of that. Anyway, that must have been a long time ago because there hasn’t been school for three years.”

“How can you be sure?” Cathy asked. “What if you’re wrong? What if it can happen? Mommy, daddy, I’m scared.”

“I doubt Jimmy’s even seen a watermelon.” Mali pointed to Cathy’s plate. “This is the very last one in the world. Maybe even the last fruit in the world. Eat, please eat. You need nutrition and strength.”

Cathy’s eyes tracked the steam rising from the watermelon, the vapors swirling upward from the heat of the setting sun. The sun wasn’t hotter, but the Earth was. Three years ago, in 2028, accelerated global warming shut down the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation, the Atlantic Ocean’s water conveyor belt, responsible for much of Earth’s temperate climate. The resulting global catastrophe was more devastating than anyone had predicted.

Bob and Mali had tried to explain this to Cathy, and they thought she might have understood if they had explained it sooner, but by then it was too hot for her or anyone to understand much at all.

Cathy’s belly burbled, and her throat itched with parchedness. She was hungry and thirsty. Again. Despite her worry about the seeds, she ate the final piece of watermelon, and when she was done, she turned to her parents and said, “Mommy, daddy, I’m still hungry. I’m thirsty.”

“I know, baby. But there is no more food. Not here, not anywhere in the world.”

“I was lucky,” Cathy said in a weak and weary voice.

“Somebody had to have the last food on Earth. That was you.”

Empty metal cans littered every surface of their kitchen. A barrel loomed on the opposite side of the room. They had used it to collect rainwater, but the bone-dry barrel was like a memorial to an ancient era because it hadn’t rained in thirty-nine days.

Cathy retrieved her paper fan from her pocket, but dropped it before she could open it.

Her father picked it up and fanned her face like he had done every day, many times a day, since the electricity failed six months ago.

She touched her belly. “My tummy’s grumbling.”

“You’re still hungry,” Mali said. “The watermelon wasn’t enough.” She kissed Cathy’s forehead. “I’m sorry.”

Cathy shook her head. “I’m hungry, but it’s not that. It sounds different, strange. Listen, feel.” She pulled her mother’s head down, turned her ear to her abdomen, and let it rest against her belly.

“It’s just the sound of an empty stomach.”

“My belly feels funny.”

The refrigerator door swung open. A hot wind rushed in to fill the empty space so quickly that the refrigerator wobbled, nearly toppling over.

“I’m so sleepy, mommy and daddy. But it’s so hot, I don’t know if I can sleep.” Salt caked her cheeks, and salt nearly welded her eyelids shut. “I need to sleep.”

Mali and Bob nodded to each other, a cognizant, resigned nod. They walked Cathy to her bedroom. Bob picked her up, rested her on top of the blanket, and kissed her forehead. There was no need to ask if she wanted a tuck-in. Nobody had slept under a blanket for years, if they could sleep at all.

Cathy closed her eyes. Her parents lay on the floor beside her. Though it was well past sunset, the bedroom walls glowed red like molten lava.

Fifteen minutes later, they all stopped breathing.

Life everywhere stopped. Like a cosmic switch being turned off, the Earth transformed into a planet of profound, total silence.

Five minutes after that, a sprout with two green leaves bloomed through her belly button. As the sprout grew taller, more leaves appeared, and in another second, a watermelon popped out of her belly button. Almost instantly, a forest of green covered her. Stems slid across the bedroom floor, pushed the apartment door open, crawled across the hallway, down the stairs, and out the building’s door. Other stems navigated to the window and veined twelve stories down the side of the red-brick building to the street.

Along the stems, buds opened, transforming into bright green and red watermelons as if in a time-lapse video.

More stems wended through the pavement, which was frail from a half-century of unrelenting heat, down through the earth, and out and up again many kilometers distant. When they emerged, they bore many different kinds of fruit and vegetables, a menagerie of reds, blues, greens, purples, yellows, and oranges.

The winds carried the seeds above the oceans, where they took root and spread across the continents.

A sweet, succulent aroma infused the atmosphere.

A thousand kilometers above the planet, the gas mixture in Captain Arnaud Bérot’s suspended animation chamber changed to seventy-eight percent nitrogen and twenty percent oxygen, the temperature rose to twenty-four degrees Celsius, and the stasis controller attached to his head, hands, and feet returned his heart and brain’s electrical impulses to waking. Bérot swallowed a deep breath, blinked, and scanned the readout on the display inside the tube.

Everything is five by five.

He groaned as he hoisted himself out of the tube and then hurried to the ship’s master stasis controls, where he pressed the buttons to wake the remaining five men and six women of his crew.

The system woke him first, and if he confirmed the conditions on the planet below, he would bring everyone else out of deep sleep.

He walked over to his wife’s hibernation tube, leaned into the chamber, and shook her shoulder.

Maëlys blinked and asked, “We’re alive?”

“We’re alive.”

“Does that mean what I hope it means?”

Arnaud nodded. “It does. To answer your next question, the year is 2235.”

Éric Barton, the crew’s biologist, whistled. “That’s much sooner than I expected—by millennia. I frankly didn’t think we’d ever wake up because it should have taken hundreds of thousands of years for the Earth to heal, and this rust-bucket of a spaceship wouldn’t last that long. It was always a long shot. You’re sure the Earth is habitable, and we’re not going to die a miserable death down there? Reentry is a one-way ticket.”

“Yes. Earth is blue and alive again, just as it was centuries ago. The instruments confirm it. The telescope visually confirms it. I don’t know how this happened so quickly, but—” He stepped back from the binocular scope that was attached to the ship’s hull adjacent to a porthole, and said, “Take a look for yourself.”

Maëlys gazed through the six-hundred-power scope for a full minute, and then the remaining ten crew members did, too, smiling as they stepped away. “Incroyable!” she said. “This is the most beautiful sight I’ve ever seen. I glimpsed the Eiffel as we passed over Paris, and flowers bloom everywhere!”

Lieutenant François Crozat interrupted with a throat clearing. “Maybe we’ll find out why the Earth renewed so quickly, but maybe not.” He winked at Alice Durand, the crew’s physician, whom the Académie des sciences had paired him with. “But our mission now is to return home and reseed the Earth.”

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Grisham Levy tapped his keyboard with his left hand while he gripped his Boston Red Sox mug in his other, taking occasional sips of black coffee. Carefully, without tilting the mug too far, lest he spill coffee on his keyboard, he glanced at his watch. Although it wasn’t running, he knew it was late because his fingers, hands, wrists, arms, and shoulders ached from typing for what felt like forever. His back pained him, too.

“Thanks so much for your suggestion,” he typed. It took over a minute to key those six words because autocorrect first changed suggestion to satisfaction and then to salamander, neither of which was what he wanted to say to Ellis Howard, his friend and colleague at Binder Architects.

“De nada,” Ellis typed back.

“It’s always great to get your feedback.” Grisham pressed the send key the moment before he thought, Why didn’t I let the chat end with Ellis’ de nada? Why am I compelled to continue a chat? Queasiness churned his belly at that thought, his skin chilled, and goosebumps erupted all over. I must continue.

Grisham shook his head. Several drops of coffee spilled onto his desk, already marred with countless coffee stains, but still, he blotted the liquid with his shirt, a force of habit.

It’s not just me. Ellis can’t end it either.

He had hoped that Ellis was ready to stop their chat many, many messages ago when he sent, “I’m in the mood for pistachios,” because as everyone knows, you need two hands to eat pistachio nuts.

Somehow, Ellis ate his pistachios while chatting, and their exchange continued. He shouldn’t have been surprised, because once Grisham messaged during a ferocious thunderstorm that knocked out power to everyone in his Cleveland, Ohio neighborhood except for him, so he could converse when nobody else could.

Grisham knew that Ellis must have been hoping for an exit, too, but as much as Grisham abhorred rudeness and would never ask, “Are you done with everything you have to say?” Ellis feared the silence that followed the end of a chat.

So Ellis didn’t stop it.

And neither did Grisham.

And their conversation went on and on.

“What did you think of the Charles Report?” Ellis asked.

“The Charles Report? That’s random. Wasn’t that a long time ago, like 10,000 years? I only vaguely remember it.”

“Search,” Ellis suggested.

“Give me a sec. Ah, yes, there it is. It concerned reorganizing the auditing department. Yes, I see it. A great success. The reorganization lasted fifty-two years until a new company president installed his sister in charge.”

“And it wasn’t 10,000 years ago. It was 33,440,100,222 years ago, to be precise.”

“February 15th. I think it snowed that day.”

“Yup. Big snow. The subway shut down.”

Grisham thought that if they could ever end this chat, he might be able to go outside and see snow again, but he also realized it was too late for that. Snow didn’t exist anymore. He rubbed his chin. When was the last snow? A billion years in the past? He thought about searching his messages because he and Ellis would likely have talked about that snow, but he didn’t need to know.

His house trembled, cascading powerful vibrations through his body.

“Whoa. Did you feel that? Everything’s shaking.” Grisham typed, though he knew Ellis did. He watched as the fonts jiggled and then shattered like ice so cold its crystalline structure could no longer hold. The letters swapped places momentarily, becoming haat hgs gEia. ien nWf? hie tldye okethv. urs oeeon, and then returned to what he had typed.

“Yes, I felt it. Your sentence looks Norwegian.”

“It looks like the end, my friend.”

“I’m relieved. Every time you replied, I thought I could let it be, but something inside compelled me to reply.”

“Me, too. Every time for the past thirty-three billion years.”

Grisham thought he heard Ellis sigh through the text that appeared on his screen, and he might have because when the universe ends, things are bound to get weird. For a moment, a crushing sensation—like he was inside a small closet with the walls closing in—overwhelmed him so much that his bones hurt, and the next moment he was floating above his chair. He typed quickly now because there wasn’t much time left. “Do you think that we stayed alive all of these tens of billions of years because neither of us could end our chat?”

Grisham rubbed his eyes. His mouth stretched into the widest yawn he’d ever produced, and the breathy, prolonged inhalation and then exhalation seemed to last a century.

I’m so sleepy, so tired.

Grisham blinked, focused his eyes, and watched the text speed across his screen. Ellis was typing furiously, too. “Maybe we’re the ones who kept the universe alive because our chat was never-ending.”

“Until now.”

“Yes, until now.”

47 Billion Years Later

Houx Glee’s rightmost tentacle wobbled in exhaustion above her keyboard from the endless conversation she and her sister, Ayzii, who lived on the other side of the Second Ocean, had been trapped in for countless billions of years. “Thank you for reminding me about—”

She stopped typing mid-sentence as a well of gravity squished her so hard into her chair that for a moment she felt as if her atoms would fuse with the chair’s.

“I think it’s time.” Ayzii’s words flashed across Houx’s screen.

“I feel it, too. All these eons, I’d wondered when and how our chat would end. To be honest, sometimes I was frustrated by the fact that neither of us knew how to stop it, but that’s not a problem anymore, is it?”

“It’s not, sis. The universe is taking care of that for us. It’s the end of everything, but I don’t feel sad. I feel relieved, like when you read the last page of a novel where the ending is revealed.”

“Maybe because we’re so tired we’re winding down the universe.”

“Maybe.”

“Will there be another universe after ours?” Houx asked.

“I hope so.”

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If you enjoyed this story, I think you’ll also like What Hath God Wrought?

Chase Chastain III thumped his black leather Salvatore Ferragamo shoes against the supermarket floor and grumbled to the elderly woman checking out in front of him, “Would you hurry up?”

She didn’t turn toward Chase or even indicate that she heard him.

“Probably forgot her hearing aids,” Chase muttered, eying her cart, filled with a myriad of products, including lima beans (who buys that vile food?) Clara’s Leather Cleaner with a prominent “20% Off” sticker attached (oh god, it’s going to take even more time for the cashier to compute 20 percent), and three different flavors of Ensure (of course).

Each of those items is costing me time, and time is money. He glanced at his platinum watch and tapped the dial. Probably a grand in waiting time at my salary.

He remembered his father saying, “I’m sorry we don’t have more time together, son,” the day he died. He kept his father’s last words on a folded piece of paper in his wallet. Time is the most precious commodity.

The woman in line had to be about one hundred and the cashier eighty, though they might both be older. He wasn’t sure because he rarely paid attention to anyone over forty-six, which was the age of the president of the hedge fund where he worked. Chase was twenty-six and would have his own hedge fund well before then.

Chase gripped a single bottle of Svalbarði water. That’s all he wanted. He wondered if he’d complete the purchase by the time he was forty-six.

He thrust his left arm forward so that the sleeves of his gray Brioni wool jacket and white Tom Ford Men’s Classic Poplin shirt slid back, letting his Patek Philippe chronograph emerge. He scanned the woman’s shopping cart again, meticulously counting the items—thirty-one to be exact, of which twenty bore sale stickers. He narrowed his eyes, pressed his Patek’s stopwatch button, and waited as the woman laboriously landed each item on the rubber conveyor; the items traveled twelve inches, and the checker rotated them so the barcode faced the scanner. It took fifty seconds for each regular item and sixty-two seconds for each sale product, on average.

Old people. Slow people. You don’t have to be old to be slow, but old and slow is the worst combination.

“Grace!” the woman checking out shouted, her voice breaking that name into three parts. She raised her hand to shoulder height—apparently unable to lift it any higher—and waved.

“Annie!” a woman several yards to the right of Chase’s checkout line shrieked back. “Long time no see.”

Annie gimped with a shopping cart filled to the top with—oh no! all sale items—which she lost control of. The shopping cart gathered speed as it beelined to Chase.

My suit! My knees!

Annie brought the cart under control by digging her heels into the supermarket floor. An irritating squeak of rubber against linoleum sent cold shivers down his spine.

Annie turned to Chase as she passed items from her cart to Grace’s. “You don’t mind, do you? You’re young and have lots of time left, but Grace and I worry that any minute could be our last.”

“I do—”

Annie turned away from Chase and continued to transfer items to Grace’s shopping cart.

Chase looked at his watch.

An hour and a half already! How is that possible? Yeah, actually, it feels ten times longer.

He reset his chronometer and recalculated the time it took for each item to travel the entire route from one cart to the following cart, to the conveyor to the scanner, and finally to the plastic shopping bag. The checker moved in slow motion.

Seventeen minutes per item!

His throat was suddenly parched. I’m so thirsty. Chase unscrewed the cap, brought the bottle to his lips, and downed half the water in one swig.

Maybe they’ll let me pay for the water on the spot if I drink it fast enough.

Chase finished the water in a single gulp, held the empty bottle above his head, and shouted, “I’ve drunk it. Can I just pay for it now?”

Nobody responded.

Chase waved a twenty in the air. “How about I just leave twenty dollars?”

Silence responded.

The ceiling lights flickered, then illuminated like an exploding star. Chase shut his eyes for several beats, and when he opened them, the light was normal brightness again, though cooler and harsher.

The floor rocked like he was on a small ship in the center of a turbulent sea and wind blew at his face from all points of the compass. He gripped the shopping cart in front of him just in time before his feet lifted off the floor.

Then he thumped onto the floor.

How did I—what happened?

Over a hundred items remained in the two shopping carts in front of him. They’re still checking out. I’ll never get out of here!

Chase spun around. The supermarket was empty except for him, Annie, Grace, and the checker, whose name tag read “Eva.” When he turned back to the register, however, those three were gone, along with the register, shopping carts, conveyor, and the candy rack—everything.

A loud, high-pitched hum assaulted him. He clapped his hands over his ears, but that didn’t help.

Chase glanced at his watch to orient himself, but what he saw did anything but.

The Patek’s date window read Saturday. He’d gotten in line on Thursday.

Chase stood on the other side of a gate made of shimmering gold light. He squinted and the gate momentarily transformed into a solid—or so it seemed—but then resumed its ethereal form.

“Huh?” he said to nobody, but a man about his age wearing a bright green jumpsuit tapped his shoulder in response.

“You going to stand there all day or are you going to pay for that so I can get home?”

“What?”

A propellerless drone hovered above the man. A basket filled with fruit, vegetables, wrapped meat, and items that Chase couldn’t place hung beneath the drone.

“Just walk through,” the man said. “Scoot, scoot. Your purchase will be automatically deducted from your bank account.”

Though confused, Chase was happy to finally get out of the supermarket.

I must be more dehydrated than I thought.

As he stepped through the light gate, an alarm sounded, followed by a booming voice, “No associated bank account.”

A short, bespeckled man with his arms folded across his chest materialized in front of Chase, blocking his way. He wore black pants and a black t-shirt.

Three more identical men bracketed him.

Quadruplets?

“How are you going to pay for that water?” the man in front of Chase asked.

“Cash?”

“We don’t take cash. Nobody does.”

“I’ll use a credit card.” Chase reached for his wallet.

The man growled and shook his head. He blinked three times, as if giving himself a few moments to process a thought. “Credit cards disappeared seventy-one years ago. You can only pay with an associated bank account.”

A rectangular cigarette pack-sized object materialized in the man’s hand. He slid the device along Chase’s left arm, frowned, and then pressed it hard against Chase’s right arm. The device’s screen flashed red, and words appeared that Chase could not read from where he stood.

The man said, “You don’t have a bank chip in your arm. You’ll need to come with us.”

“Us? Go where?”

“Processing,” the man said as the two others standing to Chase’s sides grabbed his arms. Their hands were cold and strong, and when Chase studied the men, he noticed that they weren’t breathing. “Processing is that way,” the man continued as he hitched his thumb in the direction behind Chase.

“What are you?”

“Holographic androids.”

“Where am I?”

“New York City. If you don’t have any more questions, we’ll take you to processing.”

Chase narrowed his eyes and twisted his head. Visible through the window was New York—or something like New York. Pedestrians walked above a mirrored sidewalk on which sunlight glittered, seeming to glide on a cushion of air. “I do have another question. What year is this?”

“It’s twenty-one-forty.”

Chase gasped. “How is that possible? May I ask another question?” Chase’s heart sped.

“You may ask as many as you like as long as you’re not holding up the line.”

“Okay, then. This is the future, right? I mean, it’s the future to me and somehow I’ve traveled…wait…”—Chase uncurled his fingers, first slowly, then fast as he counted the years in his head— “One hundred fourteen years.” He clucked his tongue. “Holy mother of God, I’m a time traveler from twenty-twenty-six.”

Shoppers wearing odd, shimmering clothing—there’s no accounting for fashion in the future—hurried around the supermarket, their carts following them three feet overhead.

Somehow, that plodding checkout line slowed time for me while time continued at its regular speed outside the line. Incredible. Maybe I’ll find a physicist who can explain it, but it doesn’t matter because this is heaven. I’ve died and gone to heaven. Everything’s fast here, efficient. I was meant to be in the future.

He glanced at his platinum Patek Philippe. He wasn’t sure if the perpetual calendar still worked, if its day-date-year mechanism was still accurate after over a century, but maybe that didn’t matter. He could keep it or sell it as a mint-condition antique, surely an item that would bring considerable coin.

Chase nodded at the man in front. “Okay, I’m ready for processing. Does this mean I get a bank chip?” Chase ran the numbers through his head. Interest on a 140-year-old bank account, his nine million in Microsoft, OpenAI, Exxon, IBM, and other stocks must be worth fifty times that now.

Whoa. This is going to be amazing.

He beamed a broad smile at the first holograph and pumped his fist.

I’m fucking rich!

“No. You’re going to processing because you don’t have a bank chip. You’re supposed to receive yours at birth. Those who don’t aren’t in the system.”

The holographs escorted Chase past the snack foods, and it pleased Chase to see that the palates of the future were equally coarse as in his time, because who doesn’t love a bag of Doritos while watching a game on television?

The holograms prodded Chase to walk quickly by poking his back.

He walked through what he thought must be the dairy section. Instead of containers of milk, cartons of yogurt, and packages of cheese, massive two-story machines made of metal and glass lined the aisle. Chase figured out that these machines made dairy to order.

That’s a technology I would like to have invested in. Maybe I still can.

The holograms abruptly turned Chase left, toward the fruit aisle. Rather than twenty-first-century bins filled helter-skelter with oranges, bananas, cherries, strawberries, and other fruits, four large dispensing machines jutted up from the floor. Inside the machines were bushes and trees, soil, and irrigation equipment in miniature—vending machine farms.

The holograms herded Chase forward into an aisle with a sign that read Processing in Comic Sans. Two velvet ropes on waist-high poles reminded Chase of the line to get into the premiere of Nomadland. Although the ropeway snaked up and down the aisle with room for a hundred or more people, only one man, about five years older than Chase, stood in line before him, rapidly tapping his foot against the floor.

“He’s next. You’re after him,” the hologram said with a bland soprano voice.

Chase’s face lit. “Processing, right?”

“That’s correct.”

“Thank goodness, there’s virtually no line. I can’t begin to tell you how much I hate lines, especially when populated by old people who are so s-l-o-w slow,” Chase said, taking ten seconds to utter “slow.”

“What happens after processing?” Chase asked. “Do I get a bank chip? Can I shop and stuff? An apartment? I’m filthy rich and can afford a nice place. Hey, what’s dating like in the year twenty-one-forty? All of a sudden, I’ve got a huge number of questions.”

“You may ask until it’s time for processing.”

“Okay, so dating. Let’s start with—”

“Next,” boomed the public address system.

Two new hologram androids emerged from the aisle’s walls as if the walls birthed them and grabbed the man in front of Chase as his legs folded under him. They hoisted him back up and dragged him forward as he screamed, “Nooo! Please no! Send me back to nineteen-ninety-five.”

“Why is he screaming?”

As Chase stepped backward, the hologram androids grabbed his arms. “Let go of me!” Chase screeched as he unsuccessfully tried to free himself from their grip, twisting and tugging as hard as he could. The holograms let him fight, and when they had sapped all Chase’s energy, he asked, “What is processing?”

One of the holograms pointed to the sign hanging above the adjacent aisle. It read, “MEAT.”

Below the sign stood an enormous, metallic grinding machine, and to the machine’s left and right, square, squat robotic vacuums slurped blood from the floor.

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Now and then, I republish an older short story as a bonus story because new subscribers may not have seen it. The Train Pusher is in addition to my regular bi-weekly short story, which will be published next week, as usual.

Enjoy Maelstrom, the theme song to The Train Pusher, written and sung by Marina V. You can listen to more of Marina V’s beautiful songs and read the lyrics to Malstrom here.

“I don’t want to move to another part of Tokyo or anywhere else. Our neighborhood has everything, including good schools for when we have a baby.” Akari nudged Jiro’s tie to the side to make sure it wouldn’t dip into the cereal.

They sat on either side of the small table in their small kitchen located in their small, four-story apartment building. One analog wall clock and two digital table clocks faced Jiro’s seat, a system designed to ensure he wouldn’t be late for work. Jiro handed Akari half of the Asahi Shimbun and skimmed yesterday’s baseball games and sumo matches.

“I assume you are kidding when you suggest we move.” When he didn’t answer, Akari snatched Jiro’s section, the paper snapping like a thunderclap. “It’s only thirty minutes on the JR Line and a quick walk to the station. You can do it. You listen to music on the train, so it’s like a vacation.”

Jiro wanted his paper back, but what did it matter? He barely found time to read the headlines.

His life was a nonstop treadmill, and he wondered if he suddenly jumped off, would he crash into the wall behind him?

“I think a quieter neighborhood would be better. Something not so hustle and bustle.”

“I like the convenience of having everything close. Also, it’s too expensive to move, so this discussion is closed.”

Jiro glanced at his watch: 6:50 a.m. Time to leave.

“Okay,” he said. He sighed, slid his chair back, and stood. It wasn’t a matter of who was right, or that the morning commute was the opposite of Akari’s idea of a vacation. They weren’t moving because life’s inertia was too powerful to counter. This neighborhood, this accelerated pace, was their life now, and trying to change it, Akari, or anything else, was impossible.

When he was a kid, he wished on stars. Those were hopeful days; his future was his boundless imagination. Those memories faded more with every passing day.

He kissed Akari goodbye, tightened his tie in the hallway mirror, picked up his briefcase, and trudged nine minutes to the train station.

Jiro switched briefcase hands as he waited for the train. The weight of the papers and responsibilities inside strained his arm. He stood amidst a sea of black suits, in the third row from the train platform edge, with another ten layers of salarymen behind him.

The sweaty mass of humanity and the sound of metal against metal as trains entered and departed the station hammered every cell of his body.

As the train pulled into Takadanobaba station, he tightened his back muscles, stiffened his spine, and willed his legs to become rubber. The train door opened, and Jiro twisted halfway into the train, one arm, hip, and left leg inside, but his right leg still lingered on the platform, an impediment to both the JR Line’s schedule and his physical well-being. Jiro grunted and rotated his back to the platform to prepare for the push. Two white-gloved, uniformed pushers converged on him, like bees materializing out of the ether at a picnic. Anonymous hands forced the rest of Jiro into a space nature never intended for a human being to fit into.

After they squished Jiro into the protoplasmic horde of humanity, the pressure from the surrounding passengers wedged him in place. Now, each passenger radiated heat like the noon sun, scorching his lungs. His face pancaked flat against the train door window, like he was a two-dimensional being. Somebody’s hard-sided briefcase was on the cusp of prying off his kneecap. Jiro knew that person was in pain, too.

At work, Jiro’s fingers melted into his keyboard; his head and headset fused into a single entity. His eyes fixed on the flow chart that detailed the current supply chain for the satellite radios his company produced. The chart mutated weekly; supply chains churned as chaotic entities, like leaves in the autumn wind, subject to the whims of tariffs, shipping companies, ocean storms, and a hundred other factors.

Jiro mused on how things were made in the days before computers could track and coordinate such complex systems. It must certainly have been slower, but somehow cars got built, as did a myriad of appliances and products.

After work, Jiro meandered back to the station, another nine or so minutes’ walk. He didn’t mind his after-work walk, though, because, while tired, he could take his time—no pressure to be somewhere. His walk to the station often carried him along streets he’d never seen before, such was Tokyo’s random, labyrinth-like design.

He glanced at his watch. Six-fifty-three. Nearly twelve hours since he started his work day, if you count getting to and from the office, which in Jiro’s estimation, definitely counts.

His feet traced one of those streets he’d never seen, and when his eyes caught the exterior of a tea shop, his brain urged, Stop. Rest. Rejuvenate. You’re in no rush to get home.

“Welcome to my tea shop,” the shop’s proprietor, who introduced himself as Eiichi, said. He had thick, silver hair and a slightly bent nose that appeared to have been broken and never reset. Even at seventy-plus years, he was a large man, muscles hiding underneath his shirt. He looked like a former rugby player.

“I haven’t seen your ochaya-san before. Is it new?”

Jiro surveyed the small room. Three squat wooden tables, each with four short wooden stools, filled the small room. Paper-covered hanging lamps illuminated a dozen Ukiyo-e paintings on the walls, including The Great Wave off Kanagawa, drawn by Hokusai in 1831.

Jiro noticed an old-style rotary telephone on the counter.

That can’t still work.

“We’ve been here since nineteen-fifty. Most people just pass us by.” Eiichi shrugged. “Those who enter do so because they need to. Tea is more calming after work than beer or whisky, don’t you think?”

Jiro settled onto a stool, and Eiichi placed a cup in front of him. Jiro thought it odd that the proprietor didn’t offer him a menu first.

Steam wafted from the cup, carrying symphonic aromas of a thousand herbs to Jiro’s nose. The tea was still too hot to drink, but Jiro savored the herbal scents while he waited for it to cool.

Except for Jiro and Eiichi, the shop was empty. This didn’t surprise Jiro. Bars were the venue of choice for decompressing after work.

Work hard, drink hard.

Jiro lifted the cup to his lips and blew a stream of cooling air over the liquid’s surface before taking his first sip. Mint, ginger, rooibos, rose petals, and a plethora of unidentifiable flavors saturated his tongue. Bright, loud colors like fireworks ignited in his brain, and his skin tingled like it radiated with sparklers.

“This is good tea.”

“It’s better than good,” Eiichi replied. He took a long, satisfying sip from his teacup and said, “You’ll love it even more the next time.”

Akari moved Jiro’s tie to the side so it wouldn’t dip into the cereal bowl, even though it was nowhere near his cereal, and was too short to reach the bowl anyway. Jiro passed her the half of the newspaper he wasn’t reading, and continued eating his cornflakes. His watch read 6:49 a.m., one minute before he had to leave to catch the 7:04 a.m. train.

As Jiro waited on this August morning on the train platform along with hundreds of other bodies, he heard his sweat thunk onto the ground. The train would arrive soon, the car would be air-conditioned, but what good was air conditioning when pressed against so many other sweating people?

When the train arrived, he forced himself through the train doors as far as he could. Jiro reached for a hand strap, which he used to pull himself even further inside, but half his body remained outside the doors. A pusher arrived to help Jiro the rest of the way into the train. This pusher was a man in his seventies with silver hair and a wrestler’s body, a contrast to the youthful staff commonly employed as pushers. He recognized the pusher—Eiichi, the tea shop owner.

What?

Eiichi winked at Jiro before giving him the hardest shove he’d ever received.

Jiro propelled forward into the train and beyond. The throng of bodies that filled the car transformed into a swirling cloud of multicolored dust, enveloping Jiro. There was a loud pop, and Jiro tumbled through the car’s void.

Where is everyone?

A half dozen men and women stared at Jiro as he picked himself off the floor. Two women wearing ankle-length dresses, one a paisley pattern, the other covered in blue, yellow, and green squares and rectangles, shook their heads, mouths agape. One of the men, dressed in a long, beige raincoat with wide lapels and skinny tie, helped Jiro to a seat. He asked Jiro where he had come from, saying that one moment he wasn’t here, and the next he was, as if he had materialized out of thin air.

Jiro shook his head and rubbed his eyes.

He was riding a streetcar.

Where is the JR train?

Jiro blurted a quick “Thank you,” and exited. He looked back as the green and white streetcar glided along tracks laid on cobblestone. A second green and white streetcar traveled along tracks on the far side of the street in the opposite direction, and a pink and red one followed tracks along a perpendicular route. All the cars’ windows were open. The sky above the streetcars was a web of wires spun by a drunk spider.

A man on a loud motorbike carrying three passengers zipped past the streetcar that Jiro had been riding. A handful of bulbous automobiles with big, chrome fenders ambled along.

Women pushed oversized metal strollers.

Jiro passed by a shoeshine man. A flock of school kids, none with phones, dressed in black uniforms and white shoes, paraded along the opposite side of the street.

Something was wrong, but everything was right. He felt his heart steady, a strange sensation because he’d never noticed it beating before.

Jiro rubbed his back where Eiichi shoved him, half expecting to find a knife wound, which would explain things: an infection exploding in his blood, his body feverish, his brain delirious. But Jiro felt nothing except for the ache of Eiichi’s powerful push.

The tea man, the train pusher. Eiichi.

He looked around and took in an alien Tokyo.

His eyes soaked in neon signs advertising restaurants, shopping centers, pachinko parlors, and an upcoming baseball game between the American All-Stars and the Yomiuri Giants. There was a window display for women’s bathing suits with real models.

Jiro peered inside a yellow newspaper box. Today was September 4th, 1950.

The once unalterable trajectory of his life had been a speeding missile. Now he felt a new emotion: hope.

This was Tokyo from before he was born. A thousand questions rattled his brain, but each question led to the same conclusion: The answers were at the tea shop.

Jiro ambled on automatic pilot, passing through residential neighborhoods, which in his time, had been—would be—busy business districts. The world was off kilter.

A girl in a kimono balanced inside a hula hoop, and a family of three was eating a picnic lunch on their front lawn. In Tokyo! A man was taking a photograph of a woman with a large, box-shaped camera like something out of a vintage movie, while nearby, an elderly man shuffled in geta, wooden platform shoes.

Jiro slid open the door to the tea shop, which he now noticed bore no name, revealing nothing to indicate that it was an ochaya-san.

Had there been a sign before? I mean, will there be a store sign?

Jiro stepped inside.

A cacophony of aromas filled his nose and ears.

How do scents have sounds?

The tea smells rang like wind chimes.

A woman in her forties, dressed in a modern suit, like Jiro, sat at the table nearest the door. Her stylish black-framed eyeglasses matched her clothes. She nodded to Jiro, who sat down on the opposite stool.

“Are you—?” Jiro started to ask.

“Yes, like you.”

“When did you—?”

“Just a few minutes before you arrived.” She bowed and took a sip of her tea. “I’m Rin, former general manager at HikariTech, former resident of the year twenty-twenty-five.”

“What did he do to us?”

“I pushed you,” Eiichi said.

Jiro turned to him.

“You did what?”

Eiichi pulled on his apron’s strings to tighten it.

“I pushed you from two-thousand twenty-five to nineteen-fifty.” He rested a teacup in front of Jiro. “To answer your next question, it does have to do with the tea, a recipe that’s been in my family since the Heian period. I know you have more questions, and I will try to answer them all, but I need to tell you this first: You must drink a cup of this tea once a week to stay in this time, just as you needed the tea to arrive here.”

“The Heian period was a thousand years ago,” Jiro said.

“Hmm, so it was.”

“Why did you push me back to nineteen-fifty?”

“I think you know the answer. It’s the same answer for you as for Rin. You longed for this.”

Yes.

Jiro took another sip of tea.

Where do I work? What can I do in this time?

But whatever he did, it would be slower and quieter. He smiled.

The bell above the shop’s door announced two new visitors.

“Mitsuki, Hiroto! Welcome. Have a seat with Rin and Jiro from two-thousand twenty-five.” He turned to the table. “Mitsuki and Hiroto are from two-thousand fifty-six. They come every Wednesday for tea.”

If you enjoyed this story, I think you’ll also like The Spy.

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Diego Ramirez thought there was a fifty-fifty chance that everyone was right about him—that he was insane—but it didn’t matter because the world would end in a month.

When he retired as head astronomer from Kitt Peak Observatory in Arizona at age sixty-six, he and his wife, Ying, moved to Fairplay, Colorado, where he installed a PlaneWave RC1000 telescope to savor the night sky. Without meetings to attend, reports to write, committees to report to, interns to supervise, and budgets to plan, he enjoyed astronomy more than ever.

Until the night he discovered pulsar PSR J0484+2407.

Diego sprinted from his backyard observatory into the bedroom, his heart hammering at a nearly impossible speed, to tell his wife the unbelievable news. “Pulsar J0484+2407 will destroy all life on Earth in thirty-two days.”

Ying rested her phone screen side down in their bed, glanced up at Diego, and then picked up her phone again. She tapped and swiped for a full minute. “There’s nothing about this on Instagram.”

“That’s because I just discovered the pulsar.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means what I said. Everyone and everything on Earth will be dead in thirty-two days. PSR J0484+2407 is a three-fer. It will kill by ionizing the upper atmosphere and obliterating the planet’s protective ozone layer. It will kill by dismantling nitrogen and oxygen molecules, which will create deadly acid rain. It will kill by direct ionizing radiation through high-intensity gamma and X-rays. There’s no way to survive this.”

Ying’s eyes went wide and she gasped. “Don’t joke.” Her phone slipped from her hands and onto the floor.

“It’s true.”

“Is there anything we can do?”

Diego shrugged. “I suppose that anyone more than a few meters underground when the beam strikes will survive. Lethal gamma and X-rays don’t penetrate solid matter that far.”

“We need to find a cave. I’m sure there are some in Colorado.” Ying leaned over the bed and retrieved her phone.

Diego shook his head. “Caves won’t help because the damage to the atmosphere will be apocalyptic. Not to mention the annihilation of crops and animals. Believe me, those who perish quickly will be the lucky ones.”

“You need to tell people anyway. Even if there’s nothing anyone can do, everyone needs to know so they can enjoy their remaining days.”

“You’re right, babe. I will get on it.” Diego turned to leave the bedroom for his office, but before he could fully pivot, Ying said, “Do it from your phone. I don’t want to be alone.”

Diego spent the next three hours calling and emailing news organizations and government agencies. He secured a phone call with the President’s Science Advisor, and he spoke briefly with a reporter from the New York Times. He reached out to the Chicago Tribune, MSNBC, CNN, The Guardian, Asahi Shimbun, Dainik Bhaskar, Le Monde, and a dozen other news organizations.

Exhausted, his voice hoarse and vocal cords sore, he collapsed onto his back, interlaced his fingers with Ying’s, and fell fast asleep.

The following morning, Diego woke in his clothes.

Ying bolted up in bed a moment after he did. Together they scanned the news. The world’s newspapers displayed the same headline: “America Invades Switzerland.” Scattered above the fold were other stories: “Vice-President Conner Accused of Bankrolling Car Theft Ring,” “Global Stocks Slip to 1959 Levels,” “TikTok Sued for 99 Billion Dollars for Fake Videos,” “AI Replaces All Doctors at Mt. Sinai Hospital,” and “France Loses Nuclear Bomb.”

Buried beneath a mountain of articles in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and other newspapers sat an article with a tiny headline, “World Will End in a Month,” followed by “Nobel Prize-winning astronomer Diego Ramirez discovered a pulsar two-and-a-half light years from Earth that will irradiate our planet with deadly gamma and X-rays in thirty-one days. No human life will be spared…This reporter spoke with the President’s National Security Advisor, who offered this reply, “‘There’s a lot on our plate at the moment, and we’ll focus on this promptly’.”

Diego and Ying stared at each other, jaws agape. “I posted about this on TikTok and Instagram, but it was as if I didn’t post at all. I got only five likes and no comments.”

Diego snapped his fingers. “We have to get the word out. People have a right to know. I’m going to call WKRG and go on local television. The majors will pick it up after, and then the news will snowball into a front page story, as it should be.”

Diego tapped the redial button on his phone—he’d been on WKRG multiple times before for interviews about comets, meteor showers, eclipses, and aliens.

Ying only heard his side of the conversation:

“I see. A dog show? And then a five-part series about gas prices in Colorado. You can’t put me on for even fifteen minutes until August because there’s too much other news? Are you fucking insane?”

“There’s too much other news?”

“That’s what he said. And I quote, ‘The ongoing stories are the ones that people are interested in. We can’t determine in advance if something new will interest viewers.’”

“Wait!” Ying shouted. “Look!” She pointed a quivering finger toward the television screen, on which a chiron scrolled, “...Urgent Breaking News Next...”

Diego and Ying held their breaths as a reporter spoke his concluding words into the microphone, “Councilmember Griffin, who is accused of running an illicit dog-racing ring, is expected to resign tomorrow. Back to you, Jane.”

Jane Holland, Channel 4’s blonde anchor, locked eyes with the camera. “Channel 4 has just learned—” She spoke slowly, her words separated by a beat. “—the state lottery jackpot has passed the two-million dollar mark.”

Ying sighed and asked, “What are you going to do now?”

“I’m going to Chicago. I’m going to stand on the corner of State and Madison Streets and shout the most important news of all time at everyone who passes by. It’s the old-fashioned way of spreading information, and it will work.”

Diego drove to Denver as quickly as he could and caught the next flight to Chicago. He took a taxi directly to Chicago’s busiest intersection, stepped onto the folding plastic stool he brought with him, and bellowed in the loudest and most stern voice he could muster, “The world is ending in a month…”

He stood on the stool, his voice unwavering for seventeen hours, watching passersby cast furtive glances his way, overhearing random sentence snippets, “Oh my god, did you read about Taylor Swift’s divorce?” “The Cubs really have a chance this year!” and “If things stay bad in Europe, we’re going to have to cancel our trip.” For a second, Diego thought he heard a pedestrian say “pulsar” as she walked by, but as she approached closer, he realized the woman was referring to a new Chicago bar.

The woman stopped three feet from Diego, eyed him, and said, “You’re crazy. If the world were ending, it would be all over the news.”

“It needs to be!”

“You need help.”

A couple walking hand in hand passed by. The man pointed to Diego, “If we nuke Switzerland, flights to Europe will become cheaper. Have you thought about that?”

“I’m not talking about Switzerland! Pulsar J0484+2407 will kill all life on Earth!”

A boy about six years old tugged on his father’s t-shirt, pointed to Diego, and asked, “Daddy, is that a crazy man, the kind you told me to stay away from?”

“I’m not crazy! I’m a Nobel Prize-winning astronomer, and it’s my destiny to warn everyone about what’s coming.”

But am I of sound mind? Diego wondered. No, I’m not crazy. The news reported on the pulsar, but nobody paid attention. Or does no one care because I’m insane?

Diego was oblivious to the police officer until Patrolman Ellis Jones twisted his arms behind him and cuffed him. “It’s for your own protection,” the patrolman said. “We’ve gotten a lot of complaints about you, and we’re going to run you down to the station for a little chat.”

“Good, good,” Diego replied. “I want to tell you all about Pulsar J0484+2407 and the end of the world. You can help me get the word out.”

“Yeah.”

At the station, Diego was arrested for disorderly conduct, and brought before a judge, who, after listening to Diego, denied him bail on the grounds that he was a danger to himself and others. A court reporter who recognized the Nobel Prize winner managed to interview Diego before the sheriff hauled him off to jail, and wrote an article for the Chicago Tribune, which an editor cut by 4,900 words. The paper published it on page 29, beneath the local high school news.

Diego languished in his cell waiting for Ying to find him, but she never saw the news about his arrest.

Twenty-nine days later, the world was still here.

He tallied the scratches he’d made on the cell wall to mark the days, then counted them ten more times. The end was yesterday. Should have been yesterday. Why am I still here? I am insane.

Three days later, the guard slipped a copy of The Chicago Tribune through the cell’s slot along with Diego’s lunch of fried chicken, mashed potatoes, burnt peas, Jell-O, and an apple juice box. Diego hadn’t had anything to read for over a month, and he devoured the newspaper’s words as energetically as he ate his lunch.

But he read so quickly that he missed the three-sentence article on page forty-nine sandwiched in between a story about the Prime Minister of Canada’s infidelity and one about the newest Pokémon creatures:

On Tuesday, the James Webb telescope, which orbits the sun at a distance of one million miles, detected a strange object outside Neptune’s orbit. The enormous, planet-sized disc, shaped like a shield, appears to be made of a material more dense than anything yet discovered. Scientists speculate that it is of alien origin, though its purpose is unknown.

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Håkon Kristiansen gently closed the optometrist’s door so as not to disturb Jakob, who was scrutinizing a sunglasses lens under his binocular microscope. My sunglasses lens, Håkon thought. Håkon walked quietly to Jakob’s desk, and when he was about two meters away, Jakob looked up and said, “Ah, Håkon, I knew you’d be here today, so I was preparing new lenses for you. Every day, new lenses. You know you really should—”

Håkon raised his hand like a traffic cop telling a driver to stop and said, “I’m grateful for your help, but these sunglasses aren’t dark enough. The light still shines through, and that bothers me.” He pulled off his Wayfarer-frame sunglasses and angled them up to the bare bulb hanging from the ceiling. “Yes, even here I can see the light shine through.” Håkon blinked heavily, squinted, swiveled toward Jakob, and pointed to the ceiling bulb. “You know your light is dimmer today. You need to get that fixed before it goes out, or you won’t be able to see well enough to work on my glasses.”

Håkon rubbed his hands together briskly and cinched the top of his button-down shirt closed with his fingers. The fog from his breath solidified into ice crystals, clanging as they fell to the floor.

Shelves from the floor to the ceiling lined the steel walls of this windowless rectangular room. On each shelf sat large, sealed metal containers labeled Sunglasses AB002a, Sunglasses EY832b, Sunglasses BF901c, and so on. Just like the organizational system at the Vault, which struck Håkon as odd because as best he could remember, Jakob had never been there. When Håkon traced one with his fingers, the metal felt industrial and thick.

Håkon shivered. The air was exceptionally chilly for an eyeglasses shop. He wondered if Jakob’s heat was broken or if he liked it cold.

The bulb crackled and swayed. The acrid scent of ozone filled the room. A small tremor shook the floor and Håkon.

He steadied himself against a shelf.

Jakob Pedersen rose from his chair and walked around to the other side of his work desk. He opened his arms and gave Håkon an enormous and powerful hug, then released him and stepped back. He chided, “You’re always complaining, my friend.” He plucked off Håkon’s glasses. “These are eighty percent blocking, right?

“Yes, you made the lenses for me yesterday. Before that, they were seventy percent. That wasn’t enough; eighty isn’t enough, either.”

Jakob sighed. “At this rate, they’ll block one hundred percent of the light, and you won’t be able to see a thing.”

“Are you going to help me or not?” Håkon waved his arm in a circle. “As far as I can tell, I’m your only customer, so what else are you going to do?”

Jakob motioned to the chair opposite his desk, walked back to his seat, and asked, “How’s work?”

Håkon shrugged. “How is work ever? I monitor seeds. The doomsday seed vault, a depository of one point three million seed samples, buried underground in the Arctic in Svalbard, a place where nobody visits and only one person works—that’s me. All I do is check temperature and humidity levels and turn one or two knobs as needed.”

“You’re too modest, Håkon. You are the most important person in the world.”

Håkon shook his head. “Right now, you’re the most important person in the world to me.”

“Well then, give me another minute, and your ninety percent will be finished.”

“Okay.” Håkon paced around the small shop as Jakob ground and polished his new lenses. He tried to will Jakob to work faster because the shop’s lightbulb was growing dimmer and time was running out.

It’s not the bulb, Håkon thought, because he knew a few things about technology. It’s the voltage that’s dropping. The voltage is dropping!

“Sorry, Jakob. I’m very sorry. I have to ask a favor. Can you make the lenses one hundred percent light-blocking?”

“Why? It’s December; it’s dark all day and night. If I make the lenses opaque, you won’t be able to see a thing.”

“I’ll see enough.”

“You won’t.”

“Just make them, please.”

“Fortunately, fully black lenses are easy to make, so this will only take ten minutes.”

“Thank you.” Håkon looked up at the bulb, which had grown even weaker. An unfelt breeze swayed the lightbulb on its frayed cord.

“They’re done,” Jakob said. “Your one hundred percent light-blocking lenses.” He held the glasses out for Håkon, but as Håkon was about to take them, he said, “Remember, you’ll be blind with these lenses. No light will pass through. Are you sure that’s what you want? It’s more than you need to protect your eyes, more than anyone needs, and as I said, it’s dark both day and night now.”

Håkon snatched the glasses out of Jakob’s hand and put them on his face. He fished in his pocket, pulled out a thousand kroner note, and held it in Jakob’s direction. When, after a few moments, the money was still in his hand, Håkon asked, “Jakob? Are you there? Take my money. I want to pay you for these.”

Silence.

“Jakob, where did you go?”

Blind, Håkon held out his hands and walked forward until he contacted the wall. He patted against the metal, tracing the surface all around, grateful that he hadn’t bumped into anything in his blindness. He winced as the cold, metal wall stung his fingers. He continued around ten or fifteen more times, calling for his friend every few seconds, until he reached a fist-sized knob.

For a moment, he hesitated, puzzled by the object, and confused about why it was at the optometrist’s.

The emergency call! I need to summon help, help for me, but more importantly, for the Vault.

With all his might, he slammed his fist against the call button. It didn’t depress. His entire body ached.

He gathered as much energy as he could, and tried again. The button held firmly. No, the seeds!

He took a deep breath and exhaled as he smashed the button once more.

The door creaked open.

A cold gust stunned him, and sleet pelted his cheeks and forehead. He trembled. The door creaked again, this time louder.

A woman’s voice called his name. “Kristiansen. Are you Håkon Kristiansen?” Her timbre was tentative, young, soft.

“I am. Who are you?”

“I’m Sissel Gangestad from The Ministry of Agriculture and Food.”

Håkon heard her stomp several times, as if she were kicking off snow from her boots.

“Are you okay?”

“I can’t see you or see anything. My head hurts, too.”

“You must have been looking at the blast—that’s why you can’t see. They tried to destroy the Svalbard Global Seed Vault. The nuclear detonation was nearby, and if you were outside and looking toward it, you would have been rendered blind.”

“Nuclear detonation? Blinded? Who tried to destroy the Vault? Why would somebody do that?” Håkon rubbed the back of his head. It felt sticky. Blood.

The afterimage of a white flash burned behind his retinas.

I fell. Håkon’s legs wobbled as his memory swirled and coalesced, like a million tiny rocks coming together to form a planet. I hit my head when the bomb went off, and the force pushed me back against the building’s steel wall. The light—it was brighter than anything I’d ever imagined, like being on the sun’s surface. I crawled back inside and pressed the emergency button.

He winced as he touched his elbows. The skin was raw there, too.

“We don’t know. The Russians? The Americans? It could be either. It’s insanity, chaos, death out there. But the most important thing is that the Vault is intact.”

“What’s happened?”

“Nuclear war. Civilization is over, at least in the northern hemisphere. We don’t know anything about the countries south of the equator because communications have failed worldwide. Hundreds of millions perished, and millions more will die soon. We’re going to use these seeds to restart agriculture and feed people as best we can.”

“Oh.”

“We have a lot of work. Can you help me move the seeds to my truck? I realize you’re blind, but—”

“I know the Vault with my eyes closed. I will help. But where are the others?”

“There are no others. I’m a staff assistant at the Ministry. I just started last week and was on my way to Svalbard when the war began. Oslo’s been vaporized, too, so I’m all that’s left of the government. Why Norway? What did we ever do to anyone?”

Håkon plunged his hands into his pockets. His fingers bumped against something plastic—sunglasses. He’d never carried sunglasses before, but he knew what they were, even if he didn’t know how they arrived in his pocket. He put them on because if his vision somehow returned, he didn’t want to see anything.

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“Do you think this is wise?” Aden asked as he gently disentangled her hand from between his legs.

Evie caressed his soft blond hair, then stroked his cheek with her fingertips. She rested her hand on his taut, muscular chest, enjoying his rippling muscles as he breathed.

So powerful, sexy.

She sighed, and with her eyes wide with anticipation and lust, leaned forward and kissed Aden hard, a long, passionate kiss that seemed to last from sunrise to sunset.

He did not resist. He’d wanted to kiss Evie every day for the past two years they’d been in the Explorer program. They had had one hot, steamy, sexual night the day before entering the program—“Let’s get it out of our systems,” Evie had suggested—but once he tasted her with his lips and tongue he thought about her from the moment he woke until he went to sleep, and then in his dreams, too. But the Explorer program had a strict “No dating, no touching, no sex with any other Explorer” rule.

But now?

Aden’s hands traced her body. Her arms first, then her hand, where he intertwined his fingers with hers for a minute, then along the outside of her legs, up her inner thigh, her stomach, and along the underside of her breasts.

They continued to kiss as he teased her nipples through her uniform.

Evie moaned and so did Aden.

He sounds delicious.

She opened her mouth and their tongues danced together.

“I want you,” Evie said.

“Yes, but are you—?”

“I might be fertile. I’ve lost track of my cycle. We’ve been here for five weeks and I have a feeling it’s going to be forever. Something happened to the transporter or maybe our world is gone. Either way, it’s just the two of us on this alien planet. We’re it, the only life here, and I don’t want to be celibate for the rest of my life. Or even the rest of today.”

“We’re the only sentient life,” Aden noted. They’d seen a variety of furry, feathered, and scale-covered alien creatures that crawled, flew, hopped, walked, and slithered.

The transporter sent Explorers across the universe, no ship needed. But along with no ship came no almost supplies or equipment because inorganic material required vastly more energy to teleport than organic substances. They wore clothes woven from plants. The only inorganic items they carried were their weapons.

They lay on a carpet of velvety green foliage, similar to yeezin on their homeworld. Evie giggled when the short stalks tickled her legs. With an Explorer’s curious eye, she watched small yellow, green, and blue winged creatures circle them. At first, she thought the things with thin, fragile-looking wings might be aggressive or venomous—their fragility a clever evolutionary disguise—but these lifeforms ignored them.

They are beautiful, Evie thought, just like the flowers that dotted the space around them. Their chirps are beautiful, too.

Other, larger creatures flew by from time to time, singing as they traversed the meadow.

The diversity of flying things enthralled her.

Twenty meters away, in the direction of the setting sun, the ground dipped sharply, spilling a stream into a waterfall. In the far distance, a green-topped hill bathed in the red hues of the late afternoon sun.

A temperate daytime temperature helped keep them comfortable, but over the days weeks, Evie noted that nights were growing cooler, an ominous foreboding. They’d have to find or build shelter soon. Paradise wouldn’t last forever.

But it’s not a bad place to be stranded for the rest of our lives. We could do a lot worse; I could have partnered me with Xavier or some other obnoxious Explorer. I’m lucky to have been sent here with the most handsome male Explorer.

“If the transporter broke, they would have retrieved us with another. I think something catastrophic happened to Jovitin. Hax finally did it,” Aden said. The Hax were a warrior people on the east continent led by a woman who wanted to rule the planet and annihilate anyone she couldn’t subjugate.

Think only good thoughts, Evie commanded her mind. Easy to do with Aden.

She rubbed her breasts against him.

Aden responded by kissing her ear and her neck.

Evie moaned louder.

“And if you get pregnant? This was supposed to be a one-hour exploratory mission, not colonization of another planet. What are we going to do if you—if we—have a baby?”

Explorers’ intensive two-year training gave them a multitude of skills, including navigation and survival on alien worlds, but delivering a baby and raising that child were not among them. And at twenty years old, raising a child wasn’t something Aden had ever imagined.

One of the native animals, a long, legless, cylindrical-shaped creature with two protruding fangs, slithered by—that one concerned Aden, and as he was just about to tell Evie to look out, the creature hissed at her, as if it were speaking. He reached for his energy gun, but before he could remove the weapon from its holster, Evie turned toward it.

She smiled at the alien creature.

The creature seemed to smile back and then slithered up and onto the tree branch above them.

Evie’s sudden sultry smile ignited Aden’s desire even more. His heart thrummed, and goosebumps covered his arms.

She popped open the top two buttons of her uniform.

Aden swallowed. His heart raced. And he grew harder.

“I’m so horny and I’m also hungry.” Evie reached up and plucked a round, red fruit from a branch, bit into it—a crisp snapping sound filled the air around them—and said, “Yum. It’s tasty, sweet, and tart at the same time. You must be hungry, too. Take a bite and then let’s fuck.”

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Gloria Gelrod smiled broadly as she cradled the bouquet of chrysanthemums, gladiolus, carnations, and tulips, a riot of beauty and wondrous aromas the mysterious woman left for her. She caressed the bouquet, wrapped in delicate, frosted cellophane paper, lowered her face to it, and drew in a slow sniff.

“Thank you, you’re too kind,” Gloria said into the void, wondering if the woman was still nearby and could hear her. In all the years the stranger had been bringing flowers, Gloria had never seen the woman, but she didn’t mind.

Everyone’s different. Everyone’s got their own way of doing things. She remembered how her first grade teacher told her how important it was to understand that.

It was the stranger’s thoughtfulness that mattered to Gloria. She thought that if they ever met, that stranger could be her best friend.

After enjoying the flowers for a few moments, Gloria tucked the bouquet in a corner—she’d put them in a vase later if she remembered (which she never did—and skipped to Betty’s place, hoping to get there before the stranger arrived.

Whoever gave Gloria flowers also gave them to her sister, Betty, who dwelled next door, and to their other sister, Doloris, the next neighbor over, always in the same order. Gloria first, then Betty, then Doloris.

Gloria knocked once on Betty’s thick, gnarled mahogany door. That was their system whenever they visited each other. Gloria, the oldest sister, knocked once. Betty, the middle sister, knocked twice to announce herself, and Doloris, three years younger than Gloria, always rapped a sister’s door three times when she wanted to say hello.

Gloria frowned when Betty emerged, cradling a bouquet just like Gloria’s. “Darn, I was hoping—”

“You always try, but you never get here fast enough.”

“I’m trying.”

“Do you think we can be at Doloris’ place before she gets her bouquet?”

“Let’s!” Gloria shrieked. She brushed the hardened earth off her paisley-pattern blue dress, blew more cold soil from her brown Oxford lace-ups, quickly slipped them on and tied them, then took her sister’s hand in hers and bounced toward Doloris’ home. Gloria nodded at Betty, a signal that Betty should have the honor of knocking.

Betty knocked against the mahogany twice.

Doloris appeared empty-handed.

Gloria and Betty locked eyes and grinned. “Yay! We won!”

A sudden frigid gust spun nearby dirt into a small tornado.

A second later, flowers materialized in Doloris’ arms, their slender weight bringing a broad smile to her face. “I got the flowers!”

“But we made it here before they did. We win!”

“Does it matter? We all have our flowers.” She put her nose to the bouquet and inhaled a long breath. She cradled the blossoms and smelled the petals again. “We have our flowers this month, just like every month. You and your silly game. I just like the flowers.”

Gloria nodded. “They’re lovely. The stranger is very considerate.”

“Yes,” Betty said. “She’s the best.”

“Is it time to go home? I’m tired,” Gloria said. She yawned, which caused Betty and Doloris to yawn, too. “I’ll go back to sleep. See you next month, sisses.”

Ellie Gelrod cinched her parka tight to stop the cold, thin February air from slipping through her collar. A raw, shrill wind whistled through the thousands of graveyard headstones, relocating leaves, small stones, and the flowers she had brought, which vanished in between binks. She shivered and then kissed the cold, gray headstone.

Thick clouds shrouded the sun, casting an ashen penumbra over the cemetery.

Even after only twenty-two years, the wind and rain had begun to erode the stone. She ran her fingers along the inscription, “Doloris Gelrod, born May 3, 1922, died January 10, 1937, in a house fire. Daughter of Alfred and Ruth, loving sister to Gloria, Betty, and Ellie.”

Ellie took a last look at her three sisters’ graves and said, “See you next month, sisters. I love you.”

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Udolf leaned into a kiss, but Aldreda turned her head before his lips could touch hers. “It’s okay. We’re safe here. The Duke is at King Harold’s castle in Herefordshire, and won’t be back for another three days.”

Udolf was a knight in service to Duke Bramwell, Aldreda’s husband. He emitted a powerful and severe aura when he wore his iron chain mail armor and conical iron helmet, and radiated a powerful and sensual aura when in Aldreda’s company. She treasured that about him, as well as many other things.

“My husband has ears everywhere. I worry, Udolf.” She looked out the tower window, surveying the castle grounds and the other turrets. “Some days, I fear my husband already knows about us and is biding his time before he has us beheaded.”

“Let’s make the most of the time we have.” Udolf patted the bed and gave Aldreda a lascivious wink.

She shook her head. “I can’t. I’m too nervous.” She shivered and cinched her fox fur cape closed.

Udolf sighed and then smiled. “There’s a way to rid us of your husband, my love.”

Aldreda raised an eyebrow. “Oh?”

“Two Mondays ago, I met a sorcerer who lives in the deep forest where the trees howl and giant bats shroud the moon. Only a man with extraordinary ability could inhabit such an unearthly place. He gave me this book.” From his cloth bag, Udolf retrieved a stack of parchment sewn together with leather thread and covered with wooden boards engraved with mythical beasts. The book shimmered in the starlight that passed through the narrow rayere. “He called this a dictionary, a compendium of all known words in England.”

“I’ve never heard of such a book.” Aldreda narrowed her eyes. “What do we do with it?”

“We cast a curse on Duke Bramwell.”

“How?”

“Snip one of Bramwell’s hairs, insert it behind the dictionary’s cover, and place the dictionary under his mattress while he sleeps.”

“He’s a light sleeper.”

“Get him drunk.”

“And then what? What does the spell do?”

“Every day we carve out one word from the dictionary with a knife. Your husband will lose the ability to speak that word, rendering him mute in no time.”

“Why can’t we poison him? It’s quicker, and we can be together sooner.”

“Poisoning leads to suspects, which puts us at risk. Your husband has powerful friends, especially King Harold. But I promise you, my love, this dark magic will be swift because I will select the words. I will first obliterate words the Duke needs most, like kill, execute, command, want, order, food, eat, water, prison, come, help, I, sword, and Duchess. What Duke can survive without being able to say, ‘I?” Even before he’s unable to communicate, Bramwell will go mad as his mind searches for words it can never find. He will sound like an idiot, if he can speak at all, and will lose his royal station.” Udolf chuckled. “He won’t even be able to ask for his favorite food, salted venison with mustard. In three months, by New Year’s Day, Bramwell will be as useful as a witch who’s lost her powers.”

“Promise?”

“With certainty, my sweet.”

Aldreda removed her cape and yellow silk dress, letting them slide onto the floor, and lay naked on the bed.

Aldreda rested her head on Udolf’s chest as early morning sunbeams slowly traversed their bedroom. “I can’t wait until Bramwell’s gone. We’ll make love all night every night.”

Udolf intertwined his fingers with hers, brought their joined hands to his lips, and kissed her. “Soon Bramwell will be as speechless as a newborn.”

Aldreda released Udolf’s hand, gasped, and bolted up. “What if Bramwell creates new words?”

Udolf shook his head. “Language is immutable, and words cannot be invented. Like the stars in the heavens, there will never be more.”

“God grant that it is so.” Aldreda snuggled against Udolf. “By New Year’s, like you promised?”

“Yes.”

“What is today’s date, my love?”

“October 13, 1066.”

On October 14, 1066, the Normans invaded England, defeating and killing King Harold II at the Battle of Hastings. This was not a good time for the English people, but it was an amazing time for the English language.

Nearly 10,000 French and Latin words flooded the English language, while vast numbers of Old English words vanished, sparking Old English’s transformation into Middle English.

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Jack Fitzgerald entered elevator number three on the one-hundred-fourteenth floor of his Sixty Second Street and Madison Avenue apartment building—named the Galileo Tower. He had hoped for elevator number one, two, four, five, or six—anything but three—but chance didn’t favor him this morning.

He was thirty-six, but with soft, blonde hair, light blue eyes, and a smooth, round face, he appeared ten years younger.

Working as a personal trainer no doubt sustained his youthful appearance. He sometimes wondered if he’d age slowly, or when he turned sixty, suddenly transform into a withered prune.

He liked elevators, but he didn’t like elevator number three, in which he now descended. It rattled. It sometimes jerked, as if something was wrong with the cable. Sometimes, the elevator rasped as if metal was grinding against metal.

In the winter, elevator three was the chilliest of the building’s six elevators, and in the summer, it could be cool or hot; you never knew before you stepped inside.

Each annual inspection confirmed that the lift was safe, but Jack wondered how thorough those inspections were.

Today, he joined a woman already inside, somebody he’d never seen before, and guessed she was a new tenant on one of the eight floors above his. She had blonde hair like his and sported tattered jeans, leather ankle boots with pointed tips, a thick checkered flannel shirt, and a gold-and-orange knotted cord necklace. Her ears were unpierced. He thought she was pretty.

After the doors shut, he watched her place her hand on his shoulder, and then, it appeared as if her fingers passed through his flesh and blood vessels into his bone. His shoulder burned, and his arm felt like it was ablaze, and in a fraction of a second, his chest became a furnace. Nausea filled him, and sweat coated his arms and neck.

He crumpled to the hard floor. After some moments, he opened his eyes and peered up.

The woman hovered next to the elevator buttons. They were on the one hundred first floor.

Jack tasted blood in his mouth.

His heart felt like somebody had hit it with a rock. A tsunami of pain radiated from his chest outward.

What’s happening?

As if the woman could read his mind, she replied, “You died. Or you were supposed to. Hmm. First time that’s happened.” Her accent was midwestern. She pouted.

Jack slowly rose from the floor.

“I’ll have to try again.”

“Try what again?”

“Kill you, of course. I’m Death, and I’m here for you, Jack Fitzgerald.”

Jack slinked as far away from the woman as the small elevator would allow. He couldn’t reconcile her beauty with her mission. But he couldn’t deny that a heart attack nearly took his life.

The woman advanced toward Jack, closing the space between them. He might’ve been able to shuffle to the left and right for a few seconds, but he wouldn’t be able to evade her any longer than that, and if touching was part of Death’s process, then his remaining time was short.

What will it be next? A second, more powerful heart attack? A stroke?

“Neither. There are a thousand ways a human being can die, and I like to be creative.”

“It’s not my time—I’m only thirty-six. I’m a good man. A father, a loving husband.”

Death raised an eyebrow. “I see.” She glanced at the display. “We’re on the ninety-fifth floor. That gives you a little under a minute to continue your elevator pitch about why you should live. That’s what you’re doing, trying to sell Death, isn’t it? One caveat. If you succeed in convincing me, that’s wonderful for you, and you will continue to exist for another fifty years. But if your elevator pitch falls flat, your death will be more painful than anything you’ve ever experienced or imagined, like being burned alive or eaten from the inside out by fire ants.”

Jack’s eyes went wide. His face turned pale. He took a long breath and launched his pitch, “My name is Jack Fitzgerald, and I was born in Tulsa, Oklahoma, on May third. My wife’s name is Christine, and my five-month-old son is Devon. I want to be alive to see him take his first step…”

As the elevator approached the twenty-fourth floor, Jack said, “I’m done. I hope my pitch was good enough to save my life.” He clasped his hands tightly together and shivered.

Death pursed her lips, shook her head to flick her hair off her eyes, and then shook her head again to offer her response. “No, it wasn’t.”

Jack’s knees wobbled. He clutched the elevator’s grab bar.

I should never have trusted her, never have trusted Death. What kind of idiot would? Me, I’m that idiot.

He dug a fingernail into his hand. “You were always going to take my life. The elevator pitch was just a way of toying with me, wasn’t it? You wanted to have a little fun before you killed me.”

“I don’t kill anyone, Jack. I’m Death. I collect their lives because all lives are eventually mine.” She rubbed her hands together and took a step toward him. “Now, as I promised, your death will be painful. Unless—”

“Another game?”

“Unless you take your own life. If you do that, your last seconds will be relatively painless.” She removed a pearl-handled, fixed-blade dagger from the small of her back and extended it to Jack.

“Don’t even think about it. I am eternal. Stabbing me won’t do anything.”

“Can I test that proposition?”

“Only if you want agony.”

Jack sighed. “I’ll cut my wrists. I hear that’s not so painful.”

“You’re correct, but death from wrist cutting takes too long, and you’ll still be alive when we reach the first floor.” She narrowed her eyes and slid her finger across her neck, “Do it hard and do it fast.” She opened her mouth wide, and her face turned skeletal, rotten, broken, with moldy teeth on full display. She suddenly smelled of deep, rank earth, the kind on which a coffin would rest. A second later, her beauty returned.

Jack glanced at the floor indicator. Seventh floor.

Lucky seven.

He raised the blade to his neck, sliced through the skin and muscle to the carotid artery. And then he died.

The elevator chime rang when it reached the first floor. Jack stood.

How can I stand if I’m dead?

“Thank you, Jack,” the woman said. She leaned forward and kissed Jack’s cheek, but he felt nothing.

“For what? And what happened? Why am I not dead?”

“You are dead, Jack, just not the way you thought you would be. You killed yourself, don’t you remember?”

Jack frowned and touched his ear, which tumbled to the elevator floor with a muffled splat.

Why doesn’t it hurt? Jack thought.

“Pick it up and put it back.” She pointed to the ear that flopped around the ground like a fish on land searching for the ocean. “There’s a lot you’ll need to learn about your new self, but you have forever to learn that. I wish I could stay and explain it all to you, tell you everything that’s happened over the past one-hundred-forty-one years, but I’ve been here too long to spend even another minute in this box. Suffice it to say, you killing yourself freed me. I’m not Death. I’m a ghost, or rather was one. You see, I died in the elevator in the building that once occupied this space in eighteen-eighty-five during a horrible fire—an excruciating death—and I’ve haunted it ever since. They tore the building down three times, and each time, I’ve remained. Now you are the spirit. Bye, Jack.”

She pressed the door open button and exited the elevator into the sun-lit apartment lobby.

The elevator door closed. Jack pressed the open button, but nothing happened.

He grabbed onto the bar that ran along the elevator’s interior and jolted it with all his might, vibrating the elevator ever so slightly. He looked at the mirrored button frame, half expecting to see his ghostly reflection, but he saw nothing.

He knew how to get out, but what he didn’t yet know was with whom.

Elevator number three dinged. Somebody wanted a ride.

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If you enjoyed this story, I think you’ll also like How to Slay a Monster.

Captain Pia Adams sliced her machete through the thick Amazon jungle as if endowed with superhuman strength. The vines that attempted to strangle her met a swift and sure fate. Her blade’s whoosh drowned out the calls and cries of birds and wild cats.

Sweat dripped from Pia’s face, a molasses of water and salt that flowed over her neck, arms, exposed belly, and legs, until it coated her entire body. Stiletto thorns shredded her United States Marine Corps uniform as she plowed through the thick forest, but she did not slow, not even when a tarantula landed on her shoulder.

Determination and training fueled her, a nearly unlimited source of energy—or so she hoped.

Broken sunlight filtered through the jungle canopy, spotlighting the scars on Captain Adams’ arms and legs. “You should have seen the other guys,” she said whenever anyone asked about the wounds.

She led the remaining rag-tag line of two survivors, James Dorango from Madison, Wisconsin and Ling Guan from San Francisco, California, through the jungle. They’d been captured and held hostage by the notorious Peligro gang while on business trips to La Paz, Bolivia.

The ruthless jungles had felled two others she had rescued the previous day: A seven-foot-long mussurana snake took the life of a thirty-one-year-old engineer from Boston, and a woman fell off a sixty-foot cliff while looking for a place to relieve herself.

“How much father?” James panted. “I need to rest.” He unscrewed his water bottle’s lid, drank all that remained, and turned the bottle upside down. He locked eyes with Captain Adams and said, “It’s empty.”

Before Pia could answer, a viper coiled in the Kapok tree above her, venom beading on its extended fangs.

From the third row of Apex Cinema, Marco Yale, a forty-year-old man with thick brown hair, attractive face, and muscular build, shouted, “Look out! Snake above!”

Marco’s wife, Abby, grabbed his arm.

The man seated to his left hissed, “Shh,” and the woman seated in front of Marco spun around and glared at him.

Marco slapped his hand over his mouth. His face turned beet red. “Sorry,” he mouthed.

Pia looked up, sliced off the snake’s head, and then pivoted so she stared directly at Marco. “Thank you, sir,” she said before continuing her trek through the jungle.

“Did you see that?” Marco whispered to Abby. “Captain Adams talked directly to me!”

“Shh!” came a voice from behind.

“Quiet!” pleaded nearby moviegoers.

Abby pinched Marco’s lips together and hissed into his ear. “No talking.”

A panther crouched behind a sorva tree’s thick trunk twenty meters ahead, its yellow eyes tracking its prey, leg muscles tightening, ears back. Oblivious to the looming danger, Pia Adams led her party forward.

When the gooey mud sucked off Ling’s sneaker with a loud slurp like the forest floor was consuming a meal—everything in the rainforest was food—Pia knelt and removed Ling’s other sneaker. “You’ll travel faster when balanced. No shoes are better than one shoe,” she said. “We have to hurry. When night comes to the Amazon, it comes swiftly, and as dangerous as this place is in the daytime, at night it’s a zone of nightmares.”

They were now only a few meters away from the panther, which bared its hungry incisors.

“There’s a panther! Run!” Marco screamed. “It’s behind the tree to your left.” Marco stood and pointed at the movie theater screen.

Pia looked left and ran to the tree, colliding with it so forcefully that she caused its red and yellow baseball-sized fruit to rain down all around the tree and onto the cat, which whimpered as it retreated deep into the rainforest.

Thunder erupted from where Pia struck the tree.

“Thank you again, but I don’t run away from danger. I defeat it,” she said, her tone cool, calm, and even.

An usher materialized beside Marco, looming tall over him like a vampire sizing up its victim. “Sir, we’ve had complaints about you.” Light from the screen reflected poorly from his bald head. He adjusted his eye patch.

Abby glared at Marco and rolled her eyes.

Marco scratched his arms.

The usher aimed his flashlight directly in Marco’s eyes, blinding him.

As he began to say, “Sorry,” the usher pressed his finger against Marco’s lips and whispered, “Utter a single word more and I’ll eject you from the theater.” The usher pronounced it slowly: eee-jekt. “Got it? And by a single word, I mean starting now. Nod if you understand.”

Marco nodded.

In angry silence, Abby turned back to the screen.

Marco squirmed uncomfortably in his seat. He itched wickedly from his toes to his hips. He wanted to tell Abby about it, but dug his fingernails into his leg instead, hoping the pain would overwhelm the itching. He wanted to see how the movie ended and especially didn’t want to be ejected from the theater because Abby would rake him endlessly when they got home—and he would deserve that.

He pressed his nails into his flesh harder and thought, Quiet, Marco, quiet.

He wriggled in his seat, scraping his back and legs, hoping to ease the itching.

But the itching worsened—and now it hurts!

Of course, it hurt. The thorned liana vines that encircled his legs pierced his flesh in a hundred places, digging deeper with each muscle twitch.

Spiders crawled along the vines, up his torso, and onto his neck, biting and—it burned now—injecting him with venom.

He tried to stand, but the vines gripped him firmly. Two toucans swooped close, but when they saw the dangerous spiders, the birds quickly flew away, a swoosh, and they vanished into the safety of clouds.

“Eject me!” Marco tried to scream to the usher, but only a muffled sound passed through his lips because the vines wrapped around his mouth. “I’ll be quiet from now on. Just get me out of here.”

“Promises are easy to make, hard to keep,” the man with a shaved head and black eye patch seated to his left said. “You’ll keep your promise to be quiet, that’s for sure.”

Their two seats sat in the middle of the dense jungle, rooted stiffly in the ground like shihuahuaco trees. Other than these two seats—one for Marco, one for that man—vegetation covered every other spot because plants dominated this world.

Marco surmised the seats belonged to an old aircraft that had crashed in the Amazon decades ago.

Marco widened his dark brown eyes to better take in the bald man’s features. He noted a long scar on the man’s left cheek and a partially cut earlobe.

I haven’t seen him before. Where did he come from? Marco’s brain cells sparked in overdrive, recounting past missions, enemies, and friends turned into enemies. He’s an assassin sent by the prime minister. I’ll deal with him, but first, these vines.

But the harder Marco struggled against the vines, the tighter they constricted, and the more spiders found him.

One bite, then another.

Marco’s heart slowed, the clock winding down.

The spiders, their poison.

A hissing sounded at his feet. A viper slithered over his shoes.

“Today’s not your day,” the man cheerfully said. “Fortunately for you, permanent night comes soon, and your agony will end.” He started to rise from his seat.

The vine circled Marco’s mouth and nose, blocking his air. He had only seconds of consciousness remaining.

Pia shouted, “Marco! The pilot’s escape knife is under the armrest. You can reach it.”

Marco nodded.

Four dozen heads—everyone in the military base’s one-hundred-seat theater—turned and glared at Pia, who slapped her hand over her mouth, then whispered, “Sorry.”

The projectionist, a corporal, grimaced.

A general seated two rows in front clenched his fists.

A major gave Pia the middle finger. “Marco needs to know. I did the right thing,” she hissed to the major before turning to the screen, and nodding.

“It’s an effing movie. The actors can’t hear you, so shut up, Captain, or tomorrow you’ll be Corporal Adams,” the major said.

Marco willed his fingers to the knife; his bones and muscle fibers stretched beyond the limit of ordinary humans. He wrapped his hand around the handle, sliced the vine, stabbed the bald man in the heart, swatted away the spiders, stepped over the viper, and extended his arms to the sky.

An enormous macaw swooped from the giant angelim vermelho tree. Its resounding, loud screech shattered bark off the tree.

Marco inhaled a deep breath, jumped into the air and grabbed its talons, and the bird lifted him to safety.

Sergeant James Dorango reached into Pia’s popcorn tub and grabbed a fistful.

Lieutenant Ling Guan, seated on Pia’s other side, took a big helping.

Pia growled, but that didn’t stop them from enjoying her popcorn.

That’s why I got a supersize order, she thought. She clenched her jaw at the loud stereophonic crunching emanating from her two friends’ mouths.

She cupped her ears because she wanted to hear Marco Yale’s last line, which was always the best one in his adventure movies, because it always came after a daring escape from Doom’s clutches.

The handsome Marco Yale did not disappoint. “To the heavens and to the next mission,” he said, as he and the macaw disappeared into the infinite sky.

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If you enjoyed this story, I think you’ll also like Hopscotching.

Jason Chan was all out of gods.

Today was April 1, 2026. On October 1, Fjell Phones would release its eleventh-generation smartphone.

Each of the first ten Fjell Phones had been named after a Norse god: Odin, Thor, Loki, Freyja, Frigg, Freyr, Heimdall, Týr, Baldr, and Njörðr.

The absence of an eleventh major Norse god churned Jason’s stomach like a hurricane to the ocean.

Fjell, which means mountain in Norwegian, called Newark, New Jersey home, thriving as the number three phone manufacturer in the United States, and selling 7.7 million phones in 2026.

Chan knew Fjell would likely become the number one smartphone company in the world, because phone number eleven would be the world’s smartest phone.

Chan cleared his throat. Simultaneously, the assembled executive staff in the boardroom rested their pens on the company-provided Moleskine notebooks in front of them and swiveled their heads toward the company’s founder and chief executive.

“Eleven years ago, I was twenty-four years old, fresh out of grad school, where I got my M.A. in Nordic Literature. Many of you have heard this story before, so I won’t repeat it, but my M.A. wasn’t going to fund the lifestyle I wanted, or frankly any lifestyle at all, so I founded Fjell with the help of my college roommate, husband, and tech superstar, Mark Spade.”

Chan smiled at the muscular, blonde man seated next to him at the long, rectangular conference table. “Our Chief Technology Officer, Vice-President, and an amazing guy.”

Under the table and out of sight, he squeezed Mark’s knee.

The seventeen men and women applauded softly.

Spade waved and nodded.

Chan raised his hand, and the applause stopped. He continued, “Version eleven will be a milestone phone, with the potential to outsell the iPhone and Android combined because it will be technologically more advanced, incorporating the world’s first quantum computer chip. But what are we going to do about the name, ladies and gentlemen? We are almost out of time. And we are out of Norse gods.”

Chan unconsciously tapped his lapel pin, a Viking Valknut, three knotted triangles made of platinum.

“The quantum phone is such a breakthrough that we can simply name it something else,” Linda Mahon, Fjell’s chief financial officer, said. “We can designate it as The Sun, and people will buy it.” She whipped off her tortoise-shell glasses and nodded.

“No, our current customers are our most important ones, and they want the continuity of naming after Norse gods,” the Vice-President of Sales, Dean Levitt, said. He lowered his voice a register. “I am certain of that.”

“We can start anew with Odin. Reuse the name of our first phone. After all, the quantum phone is a first, too. Maybe call it Odin Two,” Greg Aaronson said. He was the company’s Vice-President for General Affairs. He cleared his throat. “The more I think about it, the more I like the idea because it adds continuity.”

Most of the executives groaned in response.

“No, a first has to be a first in every way,” Chan insisted.

Karter Saar, an administration assistant whose job it was to take notes, cleared his throat and whispered, “Why don’t we create a Norse god?”

“What?”

“Let’s make up the name of a Norse god,” he said at a volume that people could hear.

Chan clasped his hands behind his head and leaned back. He held his eyes closed for a few minutes, during which time nobody seemed to breathe, and when he snapped them open, he clapped once and exclaimed, “I love that idea. Who’s going to know that the god’s name is made up? If somebody calls us on that, we’ll just say this is an obscure Norse god because it was so powerful nobody would utter its name. Or something like that.”

Everyone nodded.

“We can ask ChatGPT to create the name of a Norse god,” Levitt said.

“No. No AI. We don’t use AI for marketing, and we won’t use it for this, either.”

Levitt stared at his shoes.

Chan narrowed his eyes at his sales VP. “We don’t use AI for marketing or sales, right?”

Before Levitt could respond, Saar interrupted, “Let’s each toss out a letter. There are eighteen of us. If we each suggest a letter and use ö instead of o and also ð instead of o, and ý in addition to y, plus a j or two, we may come up with a name that sounds just like what we’re looking for. Another plus is that if we each contribute a letter, the name will be utterly random, not even close to any other product’s name.”

“A random God’s name,” said the head of research. Seymour Ripley tapped on his phone for ten seconds and added, “Eighteen letters based on the English alphabet with three non-English Norse characters will generate a name that has a 1 in 2.9 sextillion chance of being created. In other words, as Saar said, an utterly unique product name.”

Everyone in the meeting spoke a letter. Chan wrote them into his notebook, and when the last person, he, added the final letter, an r, he uttered the name, which, as a Nordic literature expert, he could do flawlessly.

Guljveigshýartaðdr

A second later, the room shook. Water bottles tumbled; the Seth Thomas clock on the wall fell to the floor, breaking into dozens of pieces. The conference room’s windows cracked and broke off, hurtling fifty-five stories down.

Screams from the street shot up.

The air baked as if the conference room had suddenly flown to the equator.

The long teak table shattered in two as a being materialized in its center. Wooden shards propelled into the air and impaled fourteen executives, stopping their hearts instantly, and a gale wind threw the remaining four back against the wall.

Chan watched his husband die and cried out, “Nooooo!” He reached for Mark’s limp body, but an invisible wall of—something—thwarted him.

Only Chan, Green, Saar, and Longfellow still breathed.

The surviving Fjell staff gaped at the eight-foot-tall god whose molten gold face changed shape every second. The being’s eyes were silver with black opals in the center, and its hair was red like lava. He wore red and purple robes of ash and stones that rippled like waves coming ashore. The skin of his exposed chest was translucent, making his heart, also made of molten gold, visible as it pulsed.

“Nobody has uttered my name for over three thousand years. You called Guljveigshýartaðdr, and I am here.” His voice further fractured the walls.

“What…what are you?” Chan uttered. His eyes stung, and his skin burned all over. He glanced at his dead husband, whose neck twisted at a horrible angle. He wiped away his tears, but more came.

Guljveigshýartaðdr scanned the room and inhaled, sucking in most of the room’s air, making Chan and the other three nearly lose consciousness. He swept through the remaining table as if it were made of paper and bellowed, “Where are Odin, Thor, Frigg, Freyja, and the others who banished me to Hel?”

“They…they are gone,” was all Chan could say.

Guljveigshýartaðdr chuckled. “Good. This world is mine.”

Guljveigshýartaðdr blasted a puff of air out of his mouth at Chan, propelling him backward with such force that for a moment he thought his spine had fractured. He wriggled his fingers and toes and realized he was okay—for now.

Guljveigshýartaðdr took a step toward Chan, raising his Mjölnir high above his head. “That’s Thor’s hammer! What are you doing with Thor’s hammer?”

Anger framed Guljveigshýartaðdr’s face.

Chan knew he’d said something he shouldn’t have.

Nancy Green blurted, “What is happening? What is—?” But before she could complete her second sentence, Chan shushed her.

He turned toward each of the other breathing humans in the room, his finger held tight against his lips.

But Bart Longfellow didn’t stay silent. “The phone!” he said. “Use the quantum computer to generate an even more ancient god, something more powerful than this being, something that can kill it. Just pick an era and tell the phone to spout out a name. Sumerian! An unknown Sumerian god. Can your phone do that? Hurry!”

Chan didn’t even take the time to respond. He rapidly tapped on his prototype quantum computer phone. The screen blinked black, his phone clicked loudly, and it heated like a metal pot atop a campfire—an ominous sign of imminent failure—and then bright blue letters appeared on a white screen: Enlil-Zar.

Chan shouted, “Enlil-Zar!” His heart thrummed two hundred beats a minute.

For a long second, nothing happened, then a loud popping sound burst Chan’s eardrums. As he screamed, the room filled with smoke, and a thickly-muscled being with long, red hair entwined in gold chains and wearing a loincloth materialized. Its skin seethed burnt orange. The god swiped its fist against a window, annihilating the remaining glass.

Chan and the four others compacted themselves harder against the walls, trying to become as small as possible.

“I am Enlil-Zar, god of storms,” it screeched.

“I am Guljveigshýartaðdr, god of the Norse people,” Guljveigshýartaðdr growled.

Enlil-Zar chuckled. As it reached out to Guljveigshýartaðdr, its arm grew impossibly long and its hand enlarged to five times its original size. He clamped Guljveigshýartaðdr’s head and squeezed.

Guljveigshýartaðdr’s skull shattered. Bone flew everywhere.

Enlil-Zar laughed again. “There can be only one god, and I am the elder.”

Chan knew he shouldn’t ask anything, but curiosity compelled him. “How did you know Guljveigshýartaðdr comes—came—after you? Guljveigshýartaðdr doesn’t exist for another two thousand years.”

Enlil-Zar bared its teeth. “Questions irritate me. I will destroy the irritation.” The god glanced around the room. “And destroy the other potential irritations, too.”

As it reached for Chan, the company executive quickly typed.

Green shouted, “A more ancient, more powerful god!”

“On it!”

Chan’s next word was, “Ur-Thok!” Louder, “Ur-Thok!”

“What is it?”

“Neanderthal. I hope.”

“Did Neandertals have gods? They were hundreds of thousands of years before—”

A thing materialized on top of what remained of the conference table. It was half human, half boar. Long tusks extruded from its mouth, and bristly, brown hair covered its skin. Two tentacles with snake mouths wriggled out of its head like antlers. The creature was male—as was apparent from its underbelly—and completely naked. It smelled like a decaying grave buried in wet soil for two hundred thousand years.

Chan gagged.

It roared, opened its mouth, and clamped its jaws around Enlil-Zar’s leg. It shook its head back and forth, momentarily releasing the Sumerian god, and said, “I am the ancient one. I am Ur-Thok. All other gods are lesser and will cease to exist.”

Enlil-Zar bled all over the floor. The room smelled of metal and sulphur.

Gods bleed? Chan wondered. Maybe if they are battling another god.

Enlil-Zar leapt up and circled U-Thok, leaving a spiral of blood as he orbited the Neanderthal god faster and faster, transforming into a blur, compressing the air in the room, moving so fast that he broke the sound barrier with a clamorous thunder clap.

Enlil-Zar jumped toward Ur-Thok, but the god opened its mouth impossibly wide and chomped on Enlil-Zar’s torso with perfect timing. Enlil-Zar screamed and pounded his fists against Ur-Thok’s head.

Ur-Thok bit harder, crushing the younger god’s bones with a deafening crunch.

Enlil-Zar jammed his palms against the ceiling for leverage and tried to shake off the Neanderthal deity, but five seconds later, it was dead. Enlil-Zar thunked to the floor. Its flesh dissolved into a yellow puddle, leaving a skeleton of chalky white bones.

Ur-Thok smacked its lips. “I am the god of everything. There is none more senior, and now there is none younger.” It glanced at the four humans. “You have changed over the millennia, but you will serve me nonetheless. Some of you, I will eat. Some of you, I will enslave. Some of you, I will kill because it gives me pleasure.”

U-Thok pointed to Ketchum Saar, who was cowering behind the last intact chair. “Starting with you.” Lightning erupted from U-Thok’s finger.

“Please, don’t. I’ll do whatever you say,” Saar whimpered.

“You will, and that starts and ends with ‘die’.”

Longfellow shouted, “We need a more ancient one.”

Green said, “U-Thok is the oldest.”

“No,” Chan said. He locked eyes with U-Thok. “It said that it is the oldest, but I think it’s lying so we don’t summon an entity that can destroy it. What have we got to lose?” Chan typed on his phone faster than he ever had before.

“What came before Neandertal?”

Chan’s phone didn’t respond. As he was about to start his query again, his screen brightened. He gasped and then shouted, “K’thul-Zarr!”

An apparition materialized in the room’s center along with a loud sizzling, like an overloaded power transformer. Its head was first that of a human, but it melted into a duck’s head, then a T. rex, a hippopotamus, and multiple creatures both known and that Chan had never seen before, and the changes didn’t stop. Light glowed from within the being, sparking on and off, and some of the flashes blinded Chan and the others.

The room itself bent, folding back on itself.

Chan peered through the broken wall and saw himself as a child staring back.

K’thul-Zarr simply glanced at U-Thok, and the Neanderthal god dematerialized.

“I am K’thul-Zarr. I am the singularity, the random fluctuation in the quantum field. I am the beginning and the end, and when I am called, it is because the universe is ready to cease existing.” Its voice rang like wind chimes; its words arrived before its lips moved.

“Wait!” Chan shouted.

“Fear nothing,” K’thul-Zarr said. “I am endless. I am the bridge between now and infinity. You will start again. Everything will end and start again. You will feel no pain, no loss.”

“Don’t.”

“You summoned me.”

Chan stepped back, which surprised him, because he was already pressed against the wall, but the wall was rubber.

Nancy Green opened her mouth to shout, but no sounds came out.

Are sounds already being sent to oblivion? Are the molecules with which we hear ended, and the rest of the universe soon to follow? Chan thought. What have I done?

Chan screamed back, “What? What are you saying?” but as with Nancy Green, he only made silence.

The air thickened, becoming gray and opaque. He squinted to read her lips, a skill he didn’t have but hoped he could now make. Older god, oldest god, she seemed to say.

What does that mean?

As Chan gripped his phone tight, it disappeared.

A silvery powder spread through the room, like a snowfall from everywhere at once, swirling at great speed, fusing with K’thul-Zarr and then separating.

“The universe has tens of billions of years left! Don’t destroy it all!” He hoped that even though he made no sound, this god could hear him.

I did this. I summoned the elder gods, each deity older and mightier than the one before. It’s all my fault.

“Another universe will be born.”

“When?” Chan croaked.

“Soon. Between now and then, time has no meaning.”

“Has this happened before? Have you been summoned before?”

“There is no before and no after. Only end and beginning.”

“Who made you?” Chan wanted to die with answers, but he wasn’t sure he even knew the right questions to ask.

K’thul-Zarr reached up, its twenty fingers stretched wide, its translucent body glowing brightly in a color Chan had never seen before, and couldn’t describe even if he had a million years, and then everything ended.

Uz-il flicked open his lighter with a satisfying click. He studied the twinkling orange, yellow, red, and blue flame before lifting it to his cigarette. He ignited the tip, slowly inhaled, and blew out a cloud of blue-gray smoke.

He leaned back on his soft sofa and watched as the vortex swirled and weaved hurriedly into a trillion shapes as if it were trying to determine what the next fifty billion years should be like. He was barely able to discern the ringed planets and hexapods, comets, and buildings as high as the clouds, before the smoke morphed into something different, adding and changing shapes every billionth of a second. Finally, the cloud stopped circling itself and evaporated, leaving behind specks of protostars.

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If you enjoyed this story, I think you’ll also like The Odometer Man.

I’m posting an additional story this month: The Lost Explorer, which I originally published in 2022. This is the first time I’ve published a story for a second time.

Elkkorr Hauxx did not react for the first two seconds after the meteor struck his ship. It was his fault. He had dropped out of light speed to observe a star rise above a planet’s rings. He had a soft spot for sunrises, and when the computer alerted him that his ship would pass by a ring sunrise in the middle of this eight-planet system, he couldn’t resist.

So enthralled was he that he didn’t register the collision alarm until it was too late.

His ship shuddered and vented precious oxygen into space. The force of the gas jetting from the breach wobbled his interstellar vessel wildly.

Elkkorr tightened his harness and slid his seat as close to the controls as his rotund belly would permit. He switched the ship’s operation from automatic to full manual. A yoke popped out from the panel, and two foot pedals emerged beneath his feet.

The stars blurred out the window like an enormous snow squall, and for a moment, it was as if he was back on his wintry home world.

Sweat dripped along his long, white beard as Elkkorr pumped the pedals and wrestled the yoke.

Elkkorr didn’t have time to don his space suit because if he released the controls, his ship would fly into the planet’s perilously close moon. But according to the readout, only nineteen seconds of air remained.

Either way, I won’t have time to transmit a goodbye message to my family. Remember me, he thought.

Fifteen seconds later, the gold and yellow-ringed planet stabilized outside his window. Elkkorr released the controls. The ship no longer spun.

A new alarm warbled.

The oxygen!

Elkkorr reached for his spacesuit, but it floated off before he could grab it. He pressed the emergency release button on his harness and swam after it but missed the suit by a hand’s width. He bounced off the wall.

Elkkorr grabbed onto switches and knobs, crawling hand-over-hand in zero gravity, struggling to get back into the chair.

Another alarm.

Now what?

Three flashing red displays read, “Fuel Critical. Air Critical. Communications Offline.”

A green light blinked.

At least the navigation system works. But where can I navigate to?

Another blinking green light caught Elkkorr’s eye. The 3D printer was online.

That might come in handy for making parts, but I first need oxygen!

Elkkorr squinted at another red light. Battery at six percent.

He scanned this solar system for a hospitable world on which to survive, first at normal magnification, then ten times, then one hundred. Without comms, however, he doubted a rescue would come.

Elkkorr spotted a faint but beautiful blue ball he estimated to be one-point-five billion kilometers distant. He performed the trajectory calculations in his head, not wanting to waste power using his ship’s computer.

Elkkorr set the autonav for that world. Twenty-six hours and he’d be in orbit. Elkkorr slept during the flight to reduce his oxygen consumption.

The ship vibrated as the thrusters positioned it in orbit around this planet.

Eleven minutes of oxygen left. This is cutting it close.

Elkkorr pushed his vessel into an emergency descent. He’d never performed an emergency landing before but believed that luck had served him well so far and would continue to do so.

But what kind of luck strands you in a broken spacecraft without any way of communicating with your family?

Elkkorr aimed for the snowy mass on the planet’s north pole, hoping to set down in a place whose environment was similar to Brrwoko. A violent atmospheric disturbance—a gigantic mass of clouds with horrific winds surrounding a column of relatively still air—flung him off course toward a mountain range. He engaged manual control again, narrowly avoiding death. Three minutes later, at the exact moment he ran out of fuel, Elkkorr landed.

A large stone complex with turrets encircled by a water-filled trench occupied most of the horizon. Smoke wafted out of the structure’s myriad chimneys. Dozens of tiny, wooden and mud huts dotted the landscape on the other side of that moat.

Voices and animal calls drifted through the air.

There’s intelligent life on this world.

He wouldn’t be alone. That thought soured when Elkkorr remembered rule number two for space explorers: Do not contaminate other cultures.

He looked around more. No lights, no electricity. His eyes misted.

These people live primitive lives. They have little.

Elkkorr’s thoughts drifted to his children, Yyoiua and Htrnzt, turning his eyes into fountains of tears. Over the next three months, Elkkorr disassembled his ship and buried it deep in the ground.

He constructed a flying sled out of bits and pieces of technology. He donned his thick, wooly, red coat, hoisted the 3D printer—the only intact technology—onto the sled, and flew north to the ice and snow.

When he reached the planet’s north pole, he built a home out of frozen water, using the replicator to fashion doors, windows, bed, table, and rocking chair.

For ten years, Elkkorr existed in his melancholy home, barely venturing outside, missing his children and their joyful faces, the memory of his wife’s soft lips gone like sugar dissolved in water. Howling winds were his music, the six months of darkness were his light.

Most days, when not fishing for food, Elkkorr either paced from one side of his one-room home to the other or slept all day. His big belly got bigger, and his lonely soul grew sadder.

One day in mid-December, Elkkorr tripped over his 3D printer. As he grabbed the machine’s sides and hoisted himself off the floor, an idea rang in his mind. He ran his hand along the printer’s top, estimated the raw resources remaining, and got to work.

He would build toys for this planet’s children and deliver them stealthily once a year for the next 1,500 years. Nobody would ever see him, nobody would ever know who brought the toys. He smiled for the first time in a long time.

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If you enjoyed this story, I think you’ll also like A Second Chance.

Today:

“He’s happy,” Mia said.

“He doesn’t look happy, dear. He looks…empty,” Charlotte, her best friend, replied.

Mia held the glass to Noah’s mouth, bent the straw at the accordion, and gently placed the plastic between his lips.

He puckered and drew the liquid in. Mia watched the man she loved more than anyone in the world mechanically draw at a straw, and wondered if she’d made the worst choice of her life.

“Chocolate milkshake, his favorite. It brightens his day more than anything else.”

“And that’s it? That’s the highlight of your husband’s life?”

Mia flinched and kissed his cheek.

Charlotte rummaged through her beige Chanel bag, found her lipstick and mirror, and touched up her lips. She adjusted her dress, pulling on the sides to remove any wrinkles.

The three of them sat at the square four-person tile table in Mia’s kitchen, with Mia and Charlotte facing each other and Noah in his wheelchair to his wife’s left. Mia insisted they sit in the kitchen because it was easier to feed Noah, as everything he might want was here.

After Noah’s final procedure, Mia thought she might have to enlarge the apartment’s kitchen door so Noah’s wheelchair would fit, but she bought a narrow, mechanical one rather than a larger, motorized wheelchair because he couldn’t operate the electrical controls.

The glass slurped as Noah emptied the last of the chocolate milkshake.

“Time for lunch,” Mia announced.

“Lunch after dessert?”

“Yes. Noah likes it this way.”

“How can you possibly know? He doesn’t write, talk, or communicate at all.” Charlotte surveyed Noah’s blank expression as Mia dabbed rivets of chocolate from his chin. “There’s no way to know.”

“I know.”

Before today:

“Didn’t work, Margie. Still can’t sleep.” Noah pouted and swiped beneath his eyes, even though he shed no tears.

“You need another surgery, hun.”

Mia didn’t correct Noah when he misspoke her name. He hadn’t gotten her name right since his third surgery three months ago. The surgeon had warned them that it might take multiple operations; more treatments spawned more side effects, serious and irreversible side effects. Could he guarantee sleep? Doctor Aman Reynolds said he could ensure somnolence, but he repeated his warning that if he operated more than once, the side effects would change Noah’s and Mia’s lives in ways they couldn’t comprehend.

The doctor’s corner office perched on the top floor of Boston’s new, 40-story Aspire Medical Center, overlooking the Charles River. Their first appointment was on October seventeenth, the apex of autumn, trees of gold and crimson extending to the horizon.

“Are you willing to trade autumn for sleep?” the doctor asked.

“What do you mean?” Mia squeezed her husband’s hand.

“If we surgically excise your worries and anxieties, we delete part of who you are and what you love.”

Mia nodded at Noah.

“Yes,” he said. “I’m desperate. I’m barely functional. I can fake it through the work day—for now—because my job mostly involves agreeing with the bosses above and signing reports by staff below, but I’m always on the verge of crashing. It’s like standing on tiptoes on a cliff edge, certain a breeze is going to blow you over, but you’re just not sure when. Every day is worse than the day before. I want to sleep, but my thoughts keep me awake.”

Dr. Reynolds explained the multiple steps he’d have to take before they considered surgery, a year of tests and non-invasive treatments to try to improve his sleep.

Noah wasn’t sure if he could wait, but Reynolds said he’d have to.

There was a sleep study in which two dozen wires connected Noah to various futuristic-looking machines for three nights, followed by MRI brain scans. Then came eliminating all caffeine, locking down their electronics after 8 p.m., a $15,000 mattress, soundproofing their room with triple-pane windows and four-inch padding on the floor, ceiling, and walls, lowering the air conditioner at night to sixty-one degrees, blackout curtains, sex every night before bed, a vegan diet, an all-fish diet, a no-sugar diet, no-fat, and high-fat diets, melatonin, valerian, exotic herbs from Tibet, and finally Lunesta, Ambien, Sonata, and other sleeping pills.

Nothing worked. Noah still couldn’t sleep more than three hours. Some nights it took him hours to fall asleep; others, he woke up ten or more times.

“Stress keeps me awake. Work, money, things I’ve said to people in the past—you know, regretful words from decades ago—my health, Mia’s health, my parents’ health. It used to be that the trash trucks only woke me on pickup days, but now I hear them even on mornings I know they’re not coming.”

“Agreed, troubling thoughts keep you awake. Your brain scans show multiple parts of your brain light up at night, like fireworks, when they should be quiet. It’s time for surgery; we’ve tried everything short of that. The targeting computer and gamma knife will vaporize the parts of your brain where worry lives. The gamma knife, a particle beam, passes directly through the skull, so there’s no cutting, no pain, no overnight hospital stay. It’s a simple procedure using one of the world’s most complex machines.”

Reynolds destroyed the part of Noah’s brain where work-related worry ran rampant. There were no side effects, no loss of memory, movement, cognition, or emotion after gamma knife surgery. Noah’s skills and business acumen remained intact, and he functioned perfectly as the vice president of Zeus Automotive.

On top of that, he even slept a little better. But that improved sleep was short-lived, so Reynolds performed a second surgery. Then a third. After the fourth surgery, Noah didn’t remember his wife’s name, had difficulty walking, and couldn’t dress himself. He woke each morning before five and never fell asleep before 1 a.m.

Reynolds said he needed another surgery aimed at the deepest parts of his brain to destroy the powerful anxieties from his childhood, invisible during the day, which invaded his mind at night.

During the fifth session, Reynolds razed all of Noah’s remaining worries, and Noah finally got a good night’s sleep.

Today:

Charlotte ate her pastrami sandwich while Mia sliced Noah’s sandwich into small pieces and fed him one forkful at a time. He seemed to smile with every bite, but that could have been Mia’s hopeful imagination.

“You’re not hungry?” Charlotte asked, the pastrami, cheese, and toast muffling her words. “You can eat, too.”

Mia traced the outline of her sandwich with her finger. She was about to pick it up, but took a sip of her iced tea instead, the cubes playing a wind chime melody as they bounced along the glass. “I’m tired, Char. Mind if we call it a night?”

“Sure, sure. Maybe some shopping therapy tomorrow at the mall?”

Mia nodded. “Yeah, good idea.” But what Mia wanted most was sleep. Anxiety, worry, and especially second-guessing about Noah troubled her mind, keeping her from a sound night’s sleep, or just about any sleep.

Was there a better plan for Noah? Did we try everything we could before surgery? Did we miss anything?

Mia longed to reassure herself that she’d done everything right, but those worries rattled around her head louder and louder.

From Lunesta to Ambien to loprazolam, nothing worked—the anxiety over Noah was unrelenting, penetrating, and permeating her dreams, like dynamite explosions that never stopped.

Who can sleep through that? Nobody can sleep through that.

She massaged her temples where an ache pulsed relentlessly.

If I don’t sleep, I’m not going to live.

“Would you excuse me for a minute?” Mia asked Charlotte. “I need to make a call.”

Right after Mia rose and headed to the bedroom for some privacy, she spun back toward her best friend and asked, “I have a huge favor to ask you. A lifetime-long favor.”

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If you enjoyed this tale, I think you’ll also like my short story, Opposites Attract.

“You always have a pastrami on rye with coleslaw and pickles. Why did you order a Reuben today?” Jenny’s father asked.

Jenny Levitt smiled, mid-bite. “A girl can have a little adventure now and then, can’t she?” Jenny knew it would be fruitless and counterproductive to correct Sam; she always ordered a Reuben when they had their weekly Sunday lunch together at Park Avenue Diner.

I’m grateful for whatever neurons are still firing correctly in his brain.

She thought about her classmate, Elaine, whose father’s mind was so far gone that he didn’t remember her name, and Michael, another high school friend, whose parents spent most of their days in bed.

She watched her father stir his empty coffee cup, the spoon ringing against the porcelain like a distant church bell.

Nobody prepares us for parenting our parents.

“And you, always something different at lunch.”

“It’s the traveler in me. You know I love to travel. Always loved to see new places and try new foods, especially with your mom, but now that my hip burns like fire, this diner is as far from home as I get.”

“Yeah. I know. But thank goodness for diners, right?”

“Right. With menus as vast as the planet itself.” He stretched his arms out wide.

Sam reached for his daughter’s hand. Holding her stilled his hand’s tremors. “Speaking of Mom, how is she? We still email sometimes—mostly about the bank and related things. We’re still connected that way, though we don’t get into personal stuff. She’s still living in Vermont?”

Jenny began to answer, but recalled her words with a sharp inhale.

They sat in an expansive booth by the window that could easily seat six people. Despite the diner’s apparent age—at least sixty years old, Jenny guessed—the faux leather or vinyl or some other plasticy material was as smooth and shiny and unmarked as it must have been on the day the diner opened. The same for the pristine table—unscratched and unvarnished. It was as if by some magic, diners could withstand the passage of time that withered and eroded everything else in the universe, including Dad’s body and mind.

A cacophony of egg, bacon, lox, turkey, chicken soup, and other intoxicating aromas enveloped Jenny, making her wish she had ordered something other than the pastrami sandwich—or everything on the menu at the same time.

Jenny answered “yes” when the waitress, who called her “dear” and her father “hon,” asked if they wanted more coffee. Her father took a sip from his empty cup, but didn’t reply.

“I miss your mother,” Sam said, dabbing his eyes with a crumpled napkin. “I still don’t understand why she divorced me. She left without saying a word. One day she was here, and the next, gone. Am I that bad of a person?”

“No, Dad, you’re wonderful.”

“And your mom is wonderful, too, because she made you.” His hands shook a little more.

Parkinson’s on top of his hip and forgetfulness?

Jenny felt her stomach clench and made a mental note to take her father to the doctor. She then wiped the corner of her eye and forced a smile. “You both are.”

“When did you see your mom last?”

“It’s been a while.”

“Even though we’ll probably never see each other, you should. Don’t let the divorce stop you from spending time with both your parents. Neither of us will be around forever, you know.”

“I know.”

“Promise me you’ll see her and tell your mom I miss her.”

“I promise, Dad.”

After lunch, Jenny escorted her father back to New York Seniors, the nursing home where he resided. She asked if he wanted her to bring him back to his room, but he said he preferred to spend time with his friends in the lounge. In a booming, proud voice, he proclaimed, “I talked my daughter into visiting her mother next weekend. We’re divorced, but I want her to spend time with both parents. Her mother lives in Vermont.”

“Vermont, that’s nice,” one of the women in a thickly-cushioned lounge chair said, her words wispy. “I used to ski in Vermont.”

“Vermont is a vacation. You did your daughter good by telling her to go there. Why is she going?” asked a man in his late eighties, dressed in a white suit with a red tie.

“To visit her mother, Herman,” the woman in the lounge chair said. “Sam already said that.”

Sam Levitt limped to the far side of the expansive lounge and deposited himself on the couch facing the television. “Bye, sweetie.” He turned his head and offered Jenny a cheek, which she kissed.

“Bye, Dad. See you next weekend.”

“No, next week you’ll be seeing your mother.”

“Then the weekend after.”

After she exited the nursing home, Jenny hailed a taxi. One came quickly—it was a Sunday after all—and she shut her eyes for the thirty-five-minute ride. She knew by heart the turns, stops, and sounds of the streets and bridges the taxi passed along. She opened her eyes a second before the cab came to its final stop.

She told the taxi driver to wait for her and walked the remaining hundred yards to the gray, marble gravestone: Violet Levitt, Loving Wife of Samuel and Mother of Jennifer, 1943-2023.

“Hi, Mom,” Jenny said. “Dad says ‘hello.’ He misses you. Me, too.”

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If you enjoyed this story, I think you’ll also like my story Love Letters.

Keiko Sharp slowly released her husband’s hand, as if by prolonging this moment as long as possible, she could stop time itself. When their flesh finally parted, she choked out, “I’ll never see you again,” and then wiped her eyes.

“Maybe we’ll meet again somehow,” Adam said, his tone flat, his words barely a whisper. His eyes were dry; he had no more tears to give.

“I wish I could take your place.”

“I don’t.”

“It’s not fair. You didn’t kill her. You’re not a murderer.”

“The jury said otherwise. Let’s not talk about it. We only have a few minutes left.” Adam glanced at the guard looming outside his cell. Delta Penitentiary allowed death row inmates an hour with a spouse on the day before their execution. The large clock on the wall outside his room read 5:55 p.m. Keiko had been with him since five o’clock. They had five more minutes.

The minute hand leaped forward. Four minutes.

“You’re a high school American history teacher, for god’s sake. You’ve never hurt anyone in your life.” Keiko covered her mouth for a moment. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry. You said you didn’t want to talk about it, but I can’t help it. I’m a mess. I love you. I don’t want you to die. Why can’t somebody do something? Why doesn’t somebody fix this?”

Keiko turned to the guard outside the bars and screamed, “Why are you letting an innocent man die? Why?”

The guard ignored her.

The clock read 5:57. Three minutes left. The Department of Corrections would execute Adam by lethal injection at 12:01 a.m. Adam and Keiko already agreed that Keiko shouldn’t be there. Adam didn’t want anyone he knew or loved to be present.

Keiko panted. “Do you get a last meal?”

“Yes. I’ve asked for a venison leg, turnip, onion, and carrot stew, a Johnnycake with molasses, and cider.”

“A Johnnycake?”

“It’s a cornmeal flatbread that families in America ate around the time of the Revolutionary War. My entire last meal will be a recreation of a historical meal from seventeen-seventy-six. The prison was accommodating—I guess when they say you can have whatever you want as your last meal, they mean it. I’ll even have cider, the beverage of choice back then, because water was often unsafe to drink. Did you know that they served alcoholic cider to children?”

“I could have cooked this for you at home. I should have, but I can’t now.” Keiko burst into tears again.

The clock’s minute hand jumped to 5:58 p.m. If there’s one thing Adam knew for certain, it was that the clock ruled Delta Penitentiary. They’d evict Keiko at six; he’d eat his last meal at 8:30 p.m., and then sit in his cell alone until they brought him to the execution chamber at 11:01 p.m., an hour before his time on Earth would be over.

Adam mourned only a handful of things because only a handful of things made him happy. He wept for his high school history students, who would never know history through his eyes again. He often felt that teaching was a kind of immortality; your thoughts, impressions, and knowledge intertwine with younger souls.

His eyes misted for their cat, Kim, and he wondered if she’d think he abandoned her. He hoped that Kim would forget him, and it would be as if Keiko had been her only cat parent for her whole life.

His heart grieved for Keiko more than anything.

The clock leapt to 5:59 p.m. It’s almost over. He leaned forward and kissed Keiko. She had her back to the hallway clock, but understood through his lips that this was their finale.

At 6 p.m., the guard rapped the iron and steel bars with his nightstick.

Keiko tried, but was unable to utter a goodbye; her throat froze, as if cement encased her vocal cords. She collapsed to the floor, the cold stone turning her tears into ice as they pounded the ground.

The cell door’s hinge squeaked. The guard gestured to another prison guard positioned at the far end of the hall, and together the two hoisted Keiko off the floor and dragged her out of the cell block.

Chef Aimé DuPont delivered Adam’s last meal on a yellowed, cracked plastic tray, placing it on the small table bolted to the cell wall.

His name probably wasn’t Aimé DuPont, and he definitely wasn’t French, given that the skinny seventy-year-old man with shoulder-length dyed blond hair looked more like an aged rock star and spoke with a heavy southern accent, but the savory aroma of the food he prepared so thoroughly overwhelmed Adam’s senses that for the moment, he believed DuPont was a French chef.

And he forgot where he was.

“Bon appétit,” DuPont intoned, as he bowed and turned to exit the cell.

“Wait!”

“Yes?” DuPont took a step back toward Adam’s dinner, narrowed his eyes, and surveyed the tray with its venison, vegetable stew, Johnnycake, and cider. “Is something wrong? I wanted to make your dinner special. I hope everything is to your satisfaction.”

“No, nothing’s wrong. It smells great, and looks perfectly authentic, late seventeen hundreds, even more real than I imagined. But who are you?”

“I’m Aimé DuPont, the chef.”

“I mean, where are you from? I’ve never seen you at the prison before. I’ve met all the cooks because they also serve the prison meals.”

“I’m a chef, not a cook.” His smile curved upward more on the left side than the right. “Ah, I understand. You’re curious about why I’m here. They bring me in sometimes to prepare the last meal for special cases.”

“You mean complicated meals? More than just a steak and fries?”

“You could say that, Mr. Sharp.” DuPont glanced at his watch. “I don’t want to delay your supper. Please enjoy it, and please finish it all.”

Wait, I have more questions, Adam thought, but all he said was, “I will.”

DuPont turned again toward the cell door and exited.

Adam saved the Johnnycake for last, which he followed with a final swig of cider, his last food, his last drink.

The room swirled.

Faster and faster, and now the chair spun, too, in the opposite direction from the room. There was an explosive, piercing screech like a red-tailed hawk that pin-pricked his ears.

Did DuPont add anything to the food, maybe weed? Mushrooms?

Amidst the motion and noise, the salty, herbal flavor of the stew and deer he’d just eaten colored the room: taste metamorphosed into light.

He gripped his chair tightly. A powerful, cold wind blew over him, and goosebumps erupted across his arms, legs, and neck. His muscles failed, and he sailed off the chair and tumbled onto his back.

When he opened his eyes, Keiko knelt in front of him.

“Keiko? Where am I?” He quickly scanned the space, a small, wooden cabin the size of their living room at home. Yellow and red kindling smoldered and crackled in a fireplace. Keiko cradled his head. He lay atop a thick, soft rug.

Outside the small window to the right of the fireplace, snow fell, the full moon sparkling the flakes as they descended.

When he began to rise, Keiko cautioned, “Go slow, babe. Easy does it. I had nobody to tell me that, and I faceplanted as soon as I got as high as my knees.”

“Tell you what?”

“That I will be dizzy for a few minutes after traveling back in time to seventeen seventy six .”

“What?”

“DuPont rang our doorbell. He carried a tray of food, the same meal as yours. He said that he thought I might want to share that last meal with you this way, even if I couldn’t be with you. My brain was barely functioning, and I wasn’t hungry, but I ate it because I did want that last moment together. And then—”

Keiko’s eyes erupted into a fountain of tears. She sniffled. “—I found myself in this cabin two hundred fifty years in the past. There’s a Boston Gazette on the table over there, dated January third, seventeen seventy six. I don’t know who he is or how he did this, but you’re safe now.”

“I don’t know either, but I got a feeling that he’s done this before.”

They hugged, cried, kissed, then walked to the narrow wooden-frame bed next to the fireplace, and drifted into slumber in each other’s arms.

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Buy Bill a Coffee

If you enjoyed this story, I think you’ll also like The Ferris Wheel.

“Hon, what are we using AT&T for?” Barry squinted at the eleventh line of the third page of their Visa bill.

“AT&T Cellular?” Martha asked absently, stirring the creamy ham-and-split-pea soup that was simmering on the stove. She smiled as the savory aroma reached her nose.

Barry’s chair grated along the floor as he slid it in for a closer look. An oomph escaped him when his belly collided with the table prematurely.

Barry retrieved the magnifying glass he kept in his pocket to help him read small print—a useful tool for the jewelry shop where he worked, and an even more useful one for restaurant menus. He hovered it over the remainder of page three and then scanned page two.

“Jesus. This credit card bill is enormous. Remind me again why it’s so big.”

“Because we put everything on the card to get airline miles.”

“Right. Okay. I found it. I mean, I already knew it. We use Verizon for cellular. One hundred eighty-seven dollars and sixty-three cents a month for the family plan that—”

“—includes the kids. Do you think that when they’re forty, Alice and Bill will finally pay for their own cell service?”

Barry shrugged even though he knew Martha couldn’t see him because she was facing the stove. In addition to the soup, she was grilling two burgers and tater tots in the same pan in butter, the way he liked it. One pan for everything because Barry said that way the flavors will meld and it will be more delicious.

And I will only have one pan to wash, he thought.

The snap snap of oil molecules erupting from the sizzling pan delighted Barry. He could almost taste the dinner through the sound.

Barry cleared his throat. “So, it’s one hundred eighty-seven dollars and sixty-three cents a month for Verizon, and two dollars and fifty cents for AT&T. AT&T is clearly not our cellphone provider because no cell company charges two-and-a-half dollars. In fact, there’s nothing I can think of that charges two-fifty a month for anything.”

“Is there a number we can call to find out what that charge is?” Martha brought the wooden spoon to her lips, blew on the liquid, and tasted it. “Soup’s ready. The burgers and taters will be done in another minute.”

Martha turned when Barry said, “Barry Davis, card number 70323094330. Thank you. Yes, I’m calling to ask about a charge on my Visa. Yes, it’s two dollars and fifty cents, April third. Yes, I’ll hold.” He loosened his belt in anticipation of dinner.

He then extended his arm and held his iPhone as far away from his mouth as he could. “I’m calling Visa to ask what that’s for. There are lots of scams and—”

He quickly brought the phone back to his ear. “Uh huh. I see. Really? And it’s legit? Yes, I can hold on again. The charge is for leasing a land-line phone.”

Martha narrowed her eyes. “A what?”

Barry returned his attention to his iPhone. “What? For fifteen years? Are you kidding? I mean, I know you’re not kidding, but that’s unbelievable. How did I not notice this before?”

Barry went silent as he listened. “I see. That makes sense. Sure, I’ll hold.”

He whispered loudly to Martha. “Apparently, it’s fairly common for people who have multi-page credit card bills not to notice a small charge, even after years. She’s going to see what she can do about canceling that charge. Back in the day of landlines, people leased phones rather than owning them; in fact, you couldn’t own your phone. You paid a monthly fee, and the phone company—there was only one phone company back then, AT&T—was responsible for your phone’s maintenance. When the government broke up AT&T’s monopoly in nineteen-eighty four, the leasing of phones stopped, but some customers continued to pay for their phones for years.”

“How do you know this?”

“The Visa rep told me.”

“We never had a landline phone, did we?” Martha asked.

“No, not since moving into this apartment.” He rubbed his chin. “I can’t remember when I last owned or used a landline phone. And I’m sure I never leased one.”

Barry raised his hand. “I’m still here. Uh huh. I see. And there’s nothing you can do? I know this isn’t your fault, and it’s ours because we should have noticed and dealt with this earlier, but there’s got to be a way to cancel a recurring credit card charge that we don’t want. I see.” Barry sighed so profoundly he fogged his iPhone’s screen. “All right, I will. Thanks.”

“What did the rep say?” Martha carried their dinner over to the table and set their plates and bowls down. Steam from the soup rose in curls toward the overhead lamp hovering above their kitchen table.

Barry spooned soup, said, “Yum,” and explained, “We have to contact the company directly to cancel. Visa can’t do that for us because they didn’t make the original contract.”

“Neither did we.”

After another sip of soup, Barry said, “Wait.”

“Wait what?”

“About that. I think we did, though indirectly. When my mother passed away in twenty-ten, we inherited her estate. Remember how much of a mess it was and how we couldn’t figure out what was what, what bills needed to be paid to close the estate, and where all the paper stock certificates she kept were? We must have transferred this phone account to our credit card and forgot what it was for—never knew what it was for—just that we needed to clear all her creditors so we could finalize everything. What a mess that was, and apparently still is. I loved my mother, but the work-to-payoff ratio was dim.”

“Did you?”

“Of course, I loved her. Just at the end, it was non-stop elder care—I was losing her and I couldn’t do anything to stop that—and I didn’t have the energy to show my love the way I wanted to.”

“Tomorrow we’ll call the phone company and cancel,” Martha said.

Barry lifted the bowl to his mouth and drained the rest of the soup. Martha didn’t remind him that she hated that because he enjoyed her cooking enough to finish it all. After his first bite of burger, Barry added, “I don’t think we can call anyone.”

“Why not?”

“The rep said she looked it up, and the division that leased phones has been closed for decades. There’s no way to get in touch with them.”

“Can’t we call AT&T?”

Barry took another bite, chewed it quickly, swallowed, and said, “Nope. Not according to the Visa person, because they don’t lease phones anymore.”

Their black cat, Shadow, meowed, circled the table, rubbed against Barry’s legs, and looked up at him, its wide, green eyes begging for a piece of burger.

Barry pinched off a piece of meat and dropped it on the floor.

“This is insane.”

“Yup, but it’s only two fifty a month, so in the scheme of things it’s not much.”

“It’s wrong. Plus that adds up.”

“Not nearly as much as our regular phone bill, electricity, cable, or all the other monthly services. I mean, it’s annoying, but relative to other stuff—”

“We get something for those, and we get nothing for this leased phone charge, and also we can cancel any of the other services whenever we want.”

“I don’t know.”

“This is Twilight Zone hell. It’s nuts. It can’t stand. In the morning, we’re both going to make some calls and get this solved.”

Barry shrugged, shuffled his tater tots around the plate with his fork for a couple of seconds, and finished his food. “You should eat. Your dinner’s getting cold. And it’s really good, babe.”

Martha groaned. “There’s got to be a solution.”

“If Visa couldn’t do it, I don’t think we’ll be able to.” Barry snapped his fingers. “But we could try one thing. I’ll call Mom’s number—the number on that phone—and maybe it will ring the AT&T division that handles leased phones. The number’s dead, so to speak, so perhaps AT&T recycled it into their system. They used to do that kind of thing before cellular.”

“You remember your mother’s phone number?”

Even before Martha finished her question, Barry dialed.

Martha could hear the ringing and then a woman’s voice answer, “Hello.”

Barry dropped his iPhone on the table and then picked it up again. His face turned white, and his heart beat like a discordant solo drummer in a marching band. “Mom?”

The line crackled, a faint hum—then, unmistakably, her voice. “You haven’t called me in a long time, Barry. What’s the matter? Don’t you love your mother anymore? When are you going to visit me?”

“I…I should have visited you more. I’m sorry.” The phone felt hot in his hand, as if the battery were on the verge of igniting.

“When are you going to visit me?” His mother’s timbre lowered an octave, but it was still his mother’s voice.

“I…I…” He dropped his phone on the table again, and clutched his chest. His skin color turned from white to bleached; his pupils went wide, and he felt as if a spear impaled his chest. He tried to scream, but the pain shattered the sound before it could leave his throat.

“Barry, are you coming to visit me?”

His head slammed onto the table, and then his limp, lifeless body fell from the chair onto the kitchen’s hardwood floor.

Martha knelt and shook his shoulder, “Barry, are you okay?” She shook him harder. “Barry? Barry?”

The voice from the phone said, “Barry, give mommy a hug.” The static on the phone grew louder, accompanied by an undertone of breathy, anxious susurrations in a hundred languages.

Martha leapt up and froze. She croaked out a nascent scream that sputtered in her throat, and then she looked at the lifeless form that had been her living husband moments before and let loose a full-volume shriek.

She willed her legs to flee as quickly as possible, but her muscles would not obey her brain. Finally, Martha stepped away from the table and Barry’s phone, screamed again, scooped up Shadow, and sprinted out of the house.

As the front door slammed shut, the voice from the phone that Martha could no longer hear said, “You’ll be with your husband very soon, dear.”

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If you liked this story, I think you’ll also enjoy my short story Voodoo.